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COPYRIGHT    1391.    BY    M.    P.    KICE 

ABRAHAM   LINCOLN  IN   1864 


£a>tu&i?  to  Character 


BY 


ALONZO  ROTHSCHILD 
n 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

Cljc 


41605 


MORRISON,^ 


COPYRIGHT,  1906,  BY  ALONZO  ROTHSCHILD 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


iurrsibr  £rr«« 

CAMUKIIX.E  .    MASSACHUSETTS 
1'KINTEU  IN  TUB  U.S.A. 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OP 

MY  FATHER 

JOHN  ROTHSCHILD 

ONE  OF  THE  PLAIN  PEOPLE 

WHO  BELIEVED  IN  LINCOLN 

THIS  BOOK 

IS  AFFECTIONATELY 

DEDICATED 


430119 


PUBLISHEKS'  NOTE 

THE  steadily  increasing  demand  for  a  popular-priced 
edition  of  Alonzo  Rothschild's  LINCOLN,  MASTER 
OF  MEN  has  led  the  publishers  to  issue  it  in  this  new 
and  condensed  format.  The  elaborate,  scholarly  appar- 
atus of  bibliography,  copious  supplementary  notes,  and  in- 
dex which  occupied  a  considerable  amount  of  space  in  the 
original  issue  has  been  omitted.  In  all  other  respects,  how- 
ever, the  text  of  this  edition  is  complete  and  unabridged. 


CONTENTS 

I.  A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS 1 

II.  LOVE,  WAR,  AND  POLITICS 34 

III.  GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE 79 

IV.  THE  POWER  BEHIND  THE  THRONE       ....  121 
V.  AN  INDISPENSABLE  MAN 157 

VI.  THE  CURBING  OF  STANTON 223 

VII.  How  THE  PATHFINDER  LOST  THE  TRAIL      .    .  289 

VIII.  THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON  .  327 


LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

CHAPTER  I 
A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWpOT'i- 

THE  spirit  of  mastery  moved  Abraham  IV'ricola  t» 
an  early  age  —  how  early,  history  and  tradition  are'  not' 
agreed.  Scantily  supported  stories  of  boyish  control  over 
his  schoolmates,  supplemented  by  more  fully  authenti- 
cated narratives  of  his  youthful  prowess,  leave  no  doubt, 
however,  that  his  power  came  to  him  before  the  period 
at  which  some  of  his  biographers  are  pleased  to  take  up 
the  detailed  account  of  his  life.  Trivial  as  the  records  of 
these  callow  triumphs  may  seem,  they  are  essential  to  an 
understanding  of  the  successive  steps  by  which  this  man 
mounted  from  obscurity  to  the  government  of  a  great 
people. 

If,  as  has  been  asserted  by  an  eminent  educator,  the 
experiences  and  instructions  of  the  first  seven  years  of  a 
person's  life  do  more  to  mold  and  determine  his  charac- 
ter than  all  subsequent  training,  the  history  of  Lincoln's 
development,  like  that  of  most  great  men,  lacks  an  im- 
portant chapter ;  for  the  scraps  about  this  period  of  his 
childhood  that  have  been  preserved  yield  but  a  meagre 
story.  A  ne'er-do-well  father,  destined  to  drift  from  one 
badly  tilled  patch  of  land  to  another,  a  gentle  mother, 
who  is  said  to  have  known  refinements  foreign  to  the 
cheerless  Kentucky  cabin,1  a  sparsely  settled  community 
of  "  poor  whites,"  two  brief  snatches  of  A  B  C  schooling 
under  itinerant  masters,  stinted  living,  a  few  chores,  still 
fewer  pastimes,  and  all  is  said.  Not  quite  all,  for  tho 


a          LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

playmates  of  that  childhood  have,  in  their  old  age,  recalled 
a  few  incidents  that  are  not  without  interest. 

One  of  these  anecdotes  belongs  here.  It  reveals  "a 
mere  spindle  of  a  boy,"  as  one  old  gentleman 2  describes 
the  little  Abraham,  giving  a  good  account  of  himself  in 
possibly  his  first  impact  with  opposing  strength.  The  lads 
of  the  neighborhood,  so  runs  the  story,  were  sent  after 
school  hours  to  the  mill  with  corn  to  be  ground.  While 
awaiting  their  turn,  they  passed  the  time,  as  at  the  noon 

:  recesses,  AV.itlr'.£roiies  and  fights.    In  these   Lincoln  did 

;  ntft  partlcipaie.  '    ... 

.    '  V  Re  '.was,"  says  .Major  Alexander  Sympson,  who  tells 

'the"  tale,  ftlhe  shyest,  most  reticent,  most  uncouth  and 
awkward-appearing,  homeliest  and  worse  dressed  of  any  in 
the  entire  crowd."  So  superlatively  wretched  a  butt  could 
not  hope  to  look  on  long  unmolested.  He  was  attacked 
one  day,  as  he  stood  near  a  tree,  by  a  larger  boy  with 
others  at  his  back.  "  But,"  said  the  major,  "  the  very 
acme  of  astonishment  was  experienced  by  the  eagerly 
expectant  crowd.  For  Lincoln  soundly  thrashed  the  first, 
second,  and  third  boy,  in  succession  ;  and  then,  placed  his 
back  against  the  tree,  defied  the  whole  crowd,  and  taunted 
them  with  cowardice."  We  may  fancy  this  juvenile  Fitz- 
James  shouting :  — 

"  Come  one,  come  all !  this  tree  shall  fly 
From  its  firm  base  as  soon  as  I." 

Yet  who  shall  say  whether  in  the  other  little  boys'  dis- 
colored eyes 

"  Respect  was  mingled  with  surprise, 
And  the  stern  joy  which  warriors  feel 
In  foemen  worthy  of  their  steel "  ? 

The  veracious  historian  has  nothing  to  offer  under  this 
head ;  but  he  assures  us,  which  is  perhaps  more  to  the 
point,  that  the  hero  of  the  scene  "  was  disturbed  no  more, 
then  or  thereafter."  3 

Abraham  was  in  his  eighth  year  when  the  Lincoln 
family  migrated  from  its  rude  surroundings  on  Knob 


A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS     3 

Creek  to  a  still  ruder  frontier  settlement  in  southern 
Indiana.4  Here  the  boy  grew  to  manhood  under  the  crass 
conditions  at  that  time  peculiar  to  the  New  West.  Fron- 
tier life  with  its  toil,  its  hardships,  and  its  ever  recur- 
ring physical  problems  furnished,  no  doubt,  certain  of  the 
elements  which  were  some  day  to  be  combined  in  his 
much-extolled  strength  of  character.  What  is  not  so 
easily  accounted  for,  is  the  eagerness  of  easy-going  Tom 
Lincoln's  son  to  lead  his  fellows,  in  school  and  out,  on 
that  uninspiring  dead  level  called  Pigeon  Creek.  The 
settlers  were,  in  the  main,  coarse-grained  and  illiterate  ; 
for  education  was  an  exotic  that,  naturally  enough,  did 
not  thrive  in  the  lower  fringe  of  the  Indiana  wilderness. 
"There  were  some  schools  so  called,"  wrote  Mr.  Lincoln 
many  years  later,  "  but  no  qualification  was  ever  required 
of  a  teacher  beyond  '  readin',  writin',  and  cipherin' '  to  the 
Rule  of  Three.  If  a  straggler,  supposed  to  understand 
Latin,  happened  to  sojourn  in  the  neighborhood,  he  was 
looked  upon  as  a  wizard.  There  was  absolutely  nothing 
to  excite  ambition  for  education." 5  Nothing,  indeed,  un- 
less we  accept  Mr.  Emerson's  theory  of  life  as  a  search 
after  power,  an  element  with  which  the  world  is  so  satu- 
rated to  the  remotest  chink  or  crevice,  that  no  honest  seek- 
ing for  it  goes  unrewarded.  How  honestly  Abraham 
at  this  time  pursued  the  search,  and  with  what  success, 
may  be  learned  from  the  early  companions  upon  whom 
his  strenuous  efforts  to  learn  "  by  littles,"  as  he  himself 
once  quaintly  expressed  it,8  left  a  lasting  impression. 
They  supply  glimpses  of  him  snatching  a  few  minutes  for 
reading  while  the  plow-horses  rested  at  the  end  of  a  row, 
trying  his  hand  at  odd  hours  on  the  composition  of 
"  pieces "  like  those  in  the  newspapers,  poring  at  night 
over  his  books  in  the  uncertain  light  of  the  logs,  and  cov- 
ering the  blade  of  the  wooden  fire-shovel,  in  lieu  of  a 
slate,  with  examples,  which  were  laboriously  scraped  off 
by  means  of  a  drawing-knife  after  they  had  been  trans- 
ferred to  his  carefully  economized  exercise-book.7 


4          LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

Such  industry  could  not,  even  in  a  backwoods  "  chink  or 
crevice,"  fail  of  its  reward.  The  twelve  months  of  spo- 
radic schooling8  that  stretched  between  Abraham's  sev- 
enth and  seventeenth  years  yielded  many  small  triumphs. 
"  He  was  always  at  the  head  of  his  class,"  writes  Nathaniel 
Grigsby,  "and  passed  us  rapidly  in  his  studies."1  As 
spelling  was  the  most  popular  branch,  he  made  himself 
so  proficient  in  it  as  to  become  the  acknowledged  leader 
of  the  school.  In  fact,  the  whole  country  is  said  to  have 
gone  down  before  him  in  spelling-matches,  the  side  upon 
which  he  happened  to  stand  holding  a  guaranty  of  victory. 
Hence  he  was  not  infrequently,  like  the  old  medal  winners 
at  the  art  exhibitions,  ruled  out  of  the  contest.  Becoming 
by  dint  of  practice,  moreover,  the  best  penman  in  the 
place,  he  was  often  called  upon  to  write  the  letters  of  his 
untutored  neighbors  ;  and  his  younger  schoolfellows,  in 
their  admiration  of  his  penmanship,  also  paid  tribute 
to  his  skill  by  asking  him  to  set  them  copies.10  One  man 
recalled,  many  years  later,  this  text,  which,  among  others, 
Lincoln  had  written  for  him  :  — 

"  Good  boys  who  to  their  hooks  apply 
Will  all  be  great  men  by  and  by." 

The  writer  of  the  couplet,  it  may  be  added,  applied  him- 
self so  eagerly  to  his  own  books,  and  to  those  that  he 
managed  to  borrow,  as  to  increase  betimes  his  modicum  of 
importance.11  "He  was  the  learned  boy  among  us  un- 
learned folks,"  says  a  lady  whose  girlish  ignorance  he,  on 
more  than  one  occasion,  sought  to  enlighten.12  Nor  was 
she  the  only  schoolmate  upon  whom  he  impressed  this  supe- 
riority. "  Abe  beat  all  his  masters,"  says  another,  "  and  it 
was  no  use  for  him  to  try  to  learn  any  more  from  them."  1S 
While  still  another  testifies  :  "  When  he  appeared  in  com- 
pany, the  boys  would  gather  and  cluster  around  him  to 
hear  him  talk.  .  .  .  Mr.  Lincoln  was  figurative  in  his 
speeches,  talks,  and  conversations.  He  argued  much  from 
analogy,  and  explained  things  hard  for  us  to  understand, 
by  stories,  maxims,  tales,  and  figures.  He  would  almost 


A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS     5 

always  point  his  lesson  or  idea  by  some  story  that  was 
plain  and  near  to  us,  that  we  might  instantly  see  the 
force  and  bearing  of  what  he  said."  M  Keference  is  here 
made,  no  doubt,  to  some  of  the  accomplishments  that 
Abraham  owed  to  no  school ;  but  which  he  employed, 
none  the  less,  in  these  youthful  attempts  at  scholastic 
leadership. 

The  taste  for  stump  speeches  that  prevailed  in  the 
Pigeon  Creek  region,  as  in  other  western  communities, 
offered  an  early  incentive  to  Lincoln's  ambition.  As  a  boy, 
he  gathered  his  playmates  about  him  and  repeated  with 
droll  mimicry  what  he  could  remember  of  some  sermon  that 
he  had  recently  heard  ;  or  improvised  his  own  discourse,  if 
some  transgression  on  the  part  of  one  of  his  auditors  hap., 
pened  to  suggest  a  subject.  The  topics  to  which  he  devoted 
his  eloquence,  as  he  grew  older,  were  naturally  based  upon 
the  political  controversies  of  the  day.  So  clever  did  he  be- 
come at  these  "  speeches  "  that  he  lost  no  opportunity  for 
winning  applause  with  them  when  an  appreciative  audience 
was  at  hand.  Then,  not  even  the  ordinary  considerations 
of  time  and  place  restrained  his  enthusiasm.  "When  it 
was  announced  that  Abe  had  taken  the  stump  in  the  har- 
vest-field, there  was  an  end  of  work,"  records  Mr.  Lamon. 
"  The  hands  flocked  around  him,  and  listened  to  his  curi- 
ous speeches  with  infinite  delight.  '  The  sight  of  such  a 
thing  amused  us  all,'  says  Mrs.  Lincoln,  though  she  admits 
that  her  husband  was  compelled  to  break  it  up  with  the 
strong  hand ;  and  poor  Abe  was  many  times  dragged  from 
the  platform,  and  hustled  off  to  his  work  in  no  gentle  man- 
ner." 15  But  after  working-hours,  he  met  with  no  such 
check  in  the  nearby  village  store  at  Gentryville,  where 
he  entertained  the  admiring  loungers  until  midnight 
with  arguments,  stories,  jokes,  and  coarse  rhymes.18  The 
qualities,  moreover,  that  made  him  the  oracle  of  the  gro- 
cery won  for  him  undisputed  preeminence  at  the  prim- 
itive social  gatherings  of  the  neighborhood.  His  arrival 
was  the  signal  for  the  festivities  to  begin,  and  his  lead,  as 


6          LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

the  chronicles  indicate,  was  maintained  with  a  sure  hand, 
to  the  end. 

It  is  not  to  be  assumed  that  Abraham  was  generally 
considered  a  prodigy  by  the  people  among  whom  he  grew 
to  manhood,  or  that  he  himself  was  at  all  times  conscious 
of  his  steady  trend  toward  leadership  in  these  small  affairs 
of  his  daily  life.  The  few  incidents  strung  together  here 
have  a  significance  to  the  student  of  history  that  they 
could  not  have  had  for  the  rude  settlers  who  saw  them  in 
unrelated  parts,  and  unilluinined  by  the  search-light  which 
the  halo  of  the  great  man's  later  career  casts  back  over  his 
humble  beginnings.  Yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
superiority  of  "  the  learned  boy  "  was  recognized  by  many 
of  his  associates.  His  second-mother — for  why  apply  to 
this  sterling  woman  a  title  that  would  ill  describe  her  ?  — 
had  a  confidence  in  his  powers  which  she  influenced  her 
husband,  not  without  difficulty,  to  share.17  Thomas  Lin- 
coln, like  some  of  his  relatives  and  neighbors,  was  inclined 
to  regard  as  lazy  this  son  who  preferred  a  book  to  a  spade. 
And  speaking  of  Abraham  many  years  later,  cousin  Dennis 
Hanks,  one  of  the  companions  of  his  boyhood,  said :  — 

"  Lincoln  was  lazy,  a  very  lazy  man.  He  was  always 
reading,  scribbling,  writing,  ciphering,  writing  poetry  and 
the  like."  18 

To  which  neighbor  John  Romine,  whose  recollections 
had  also  somehow  escaped  becoming  steeped  in  the  in- 
cense of  hero-worship,  adds :  — 

"  He  worked  for  me,  but  was  always  reading  and  think- 
ing. I  used  to  get  mad  at  him  for  it.  I  say  he  was  awfully 
lazy.  He  would  laugh  and  talk  —  crack  his  jokes  and  tell 
stories  all  the  time ;  did  n't  love  work  half  as  much  as  his 
pay.  He  said  to  me  one  day  that  his  father  taught  him 
to  work,  but  he  never  taught  him  to  love  it."  19 

None  of  these  persons  understood  the  boy,  but  it  is  not 
at  all  clear  that  the  boy  understood  himself.  With  Abra- 
ham's desires  to  excel  his  schoolfellows  were  mingled  vague 
dreams  of  larger  competitions,  that  carried  him,  in  fancy, 


A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS     7 

far  beyond  the  narrow  horizon  of  his  chinks  and  crevices, 
into  the  broad  world  beyond.  There,  like  his  favorite  hero, 
Parson  Weems's  impossible  Washington,  he  hoped  to 
achieve  greatness.20  Indeed,  when  Mrs.  Josiah  Crawford, 
who  took  a  motherly  interest  in  the  lad,  reproved  him  for 
teasing  the  girls  in  her  kitchen,  and  asked  him  what  he 
supposed  would  become  of  him,  he  promptly  answered, 
"  I  '11  be  President."  This  prediction,  so  common  in  the 
mouths  of  American  boys,  whose  eyes  are  fixed  early  upon 
the  first  place  in  the  nation,  is  said  to  have  been  repeated 
by  him,  from  time  to  time,  whether  seriously,  some  of  his 
biographers  are  inclined  to  doubt.21  There  can  be  no 
question,  however,  as  to  the  more  important  fact  —  this 
particular  boy  had  taken  his  first  halting  steps  up  the  steep 
which  leads  to  that  eminence. 

The  mental  superiority  which  gave  Lincoln  a  certain 
distinction  in  the  eyes  of  some  of  the  settlers  among 
whom  he  spent  his  youth  would  have  been  regarded, 
even  by  them,  with  scant  respect,  had  it  not  been  ac- 
companied by  what  appealed  to  the  admiration  of  all 
his  neighbors  alike  —  physical  preeminence.  Strength  of 
body  was  rated  high  by  these  frontiersmen,  whose  very 
existence  depended  upon  the  iron  in  their  frames.  Over- 
coming, with  rugged  self-reliance,  the  obstacles  which 
uncompromising  nature  opposed  to  them  on  every  side, 
they  had  hewn  their  homes  out  of  the  wilderness  by  sheer 
force  of  muscle.  Somewhat  of  that  same  vigor  was  re- 
quired, after  the  clearings  had  been  made  and  the  rude 
shelters  had  been  thrown  up,  to  win  day  by  day  a  sem- 
blance of  human  comfort.  What  wonder  that  these  men 
were  concerned  with  facts,  not  theories ;  with  the  harden- 
ing of  the  sinews,  not  the  cultivation  of  the  brain !  No 
mere  bookman,  however  witty  or  wise,  could  long  have 
held  their  esteem.  Their  standard  of  excellence,  though 
rough,  had  the  merit  of  being  simple  —  so  simple  that  the 
very  children  might  grasp  its  full  meaning.  One  of  them 
certainly  did.  For  Abraham's  singular  ambition  to  know 


8          LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

was  not  allowed  to  diminish  his  part  in  the  more  com- 
inon  ambition  to  do.  On  the  contrary,  the  two  aspirations 
appear  to  have  kept  pace  so  evenly  in  him  as  to  ree'n- 
force  each  other.  What  of  ascendancy  his  alert  mind 
alone  failed  to  gain  was  easily  established  when  the  intel- 
lect called  into  play  his  powerful  physique. 

The  sturdy  constitution  that  Lincoln  inherited  from  five 
generations  of  pioneers  was  hardened  by  the  toil  and 
exposure  to  which,  even  more  than  most  backwoods  boys, 
he  was  subjected  from  early  childhood.22  "  Abraham, 
though  very  young,  was  large  of  his  age,  and  had  an  ax 
put  into  his  hands  at  once,"  wrote  he,  referring,  in  that 
all  too  brief  autobiography,  to  the  time  of  the  settlement 
near  Little  Pigeon  Creek,  "  and  from  that  till  within  his 
twenty-third  year  he  was  almost  constantly  handling  that 
most  useful  instrument  —  less,  of  course,  in  plowing  and 
harvesting  seasons."23  The  fifteen  years  of  labor  thus 
summarily  disposed  of  constituted,  for  the  most  part,  the 
physical  discipline  of  Lincoln's  life.  How  severe  this  was 
may  be  inferred  from  the  mere  mention  of  what  was  re- 
quired of  him.  As  he  became  strong  enough,  he  cleared 
openings  in  the  forest,  cut  timber,  split  rails,  chopped 
wood,  guided  the  cumbrous  shovel-plow,  hoed  corn,  and 
pulled  fodder.  When  the  grain  was  ripe,  he  harvested  it 
with  a  sickle,  threshed  it  witli  a  flail,  cleaned  it  with  a 
sheet,  and  took  it  to  the  mill,  where  it  was  laboriously 
ground  into  unbolted  flour  with  equally  primitive  con- 
trivances. Together  with  these  tasks  of  seed-time  and 
harvest,  he  fetched  and  carried,  carpentered  and  tinkered, 
in  short,  earned  his  supper  of  corn-dodgers  and  his 
shake-down  of  leaves  in  the  loft,  many  times  over.  Never- 
theless, when  the  home  work  was  done,  Thomas  Lincoln, 
who,  whatever  may  have  been  his  faults,  cannot  justly 
be  accused  of  erring  on  the  side  of  indulgence,  hired  him 
out  as  a  day  laborer  among  the  neighbors.24  They,  of 
course,  did  not  spare  the  boy  any  more  than  did  his  father. 
No  chore  was  deemed  too  mean,  no  job  too  great,  for  this 


A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS     9 

good-natured  young  fellow.  So  that,  all  in  all,  heavy 
drafts  must  have  been  made  upon  him.25  He  met  them  — • 
despite  his  dislike  for  manual  labor  —  on  demand,  checking 
out  freely  of  his  strength,  while  unconsciously  acquiring, 
by  way  of  exchange,  more  than  the  equivalent  in  virile 
self-reliance ;  and  the  perfect  command  over  his  resources, 
in  any  emergency,  that  later  became  characteristic  of  him, 
should  in  large  measure  be  credited  to  this  pioneer  ac- 
counting. In  fact,  of  Lincoln  may  be  said  what  Fuller 
quaintly  said  of  Drake,  the  "  pains  and  patience  in  his 
youth  knit  the  joints  of  his  soul." 

For  the  more  palpable  returns  in  kind  from  his  outlay 
of  brawn,  Abraham  did  not  have  to  wait  long.  As  early 
as  his  eleventh  year  began  the  remarkable  development 
in  physique  which  culminated  before  he  had  reached  his 
seventeenth  birthday.  At  that  time,  having  attained  his 
full  height,  —  within  a  fraction  of  six  feet  and  four 
inches,  —  he  was,  according  to  accepted  descriptions  of 
him,  lean,  large-boned,  and  muscular,  thin  through  the 
chest,  narrow  across  the  slightly  stooping  shoulders,  long 
of  limb,  large  of  hand  and  foot,  sure  of  reach,  and  powerful 
of  grip,  —  the  very  type  of  the  North  Mississippi  valley 
pioneer  at  his  best.20  The  strength  of  the  young  giant,  as 
well  as  his  skill  in  applying  it,  easily  won  for  him  the 
lead  among  the  vigorous  men  of  this  class  on  Pigeon 
Creek.  They  have  handed  down  tales  of  his  achievements 
that  call  to  mind  the  legends  with  which  have  been 
adorned  the  histories  of  Samson  and  of  Milo.  Like  these 
heroes,  Lincoln  is  said  to  have  performed  prodigies  of 
muscle;  and  still  further  like  them,  despite  the  skepti- 
cism aroused,  naturally  enough,  by  extraordinary  details, 
he  may  be  looked  upon  as  having  been  endowed  with  the 
attributes  upon  which  the  stories  essentially  rest.  Whether 
or  not  he  performed  this  or  that  particular  feat  exactly 
as  it  is  described,  he  did,  beyond  question,  impress  him- 
self upon  the  settlers  as  "  the  longest  and  strongest "  of 
them  all. 


io        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF   MEN 

Lincoln's  employment  throughout  the  neighborhood  as 
a  hired  man  afforded  him  abundant  opportunity  for  the 
display  of  his  powers.  A  certain  good-humored  sense  of 
duty,  no  less  than  a  never  flagging  ambition  to  excel, 
stimulated  him  to  make  "  a  clean  sweep,"  as  he  once 
phrased  it,  of  whatever  he  did.  These  jobs,  it  should  be 
remembered,  were  not  entirely  to  his  taste,  and  he  "  was 
no  hand,"  says  one  old  lady,  "  to  pitch  into  his  work  like 
killing  snakes";27  yet,  when  he  did  take  hold  —  and  his 
services  were  always  in  request  —  he  was  bound  to  out- 
work his  employers.  One  of  them,  who  became  his  fast 
friend,  asserted :  — 

"  He  could  strike  with  a  maul  a  heavier  blow  —  could 
sink  an  ax  deeper  into  wood  than  any  man  I  ever  saw."  M 

And  cousin  Dennis,  a  not  too  consistent  Boswell,  forgot, 
in  a  moment  of  enthusiasm,  his  published  opinion  that 
Abraham  was  "lazy,  very  lazy,"  long  enough  to  exclaim: 

"  My,  how  he  would  chop !  His  ax  would  flash  and  bite 
into  a  sugar-tree  or  sycamore,  and  down  it  would  come. 
If  you  heard  him  fellin'  trees  in  a  clearin',  you  would  say 
there  were  three  men  at  work  by  the  way  the  xrees  fell."  n 

A  stripling  who  handled,  in  that  fashion,  the  back- 
woodsmen's favorite  implement  could  not  fail  to  command 
their  respect ;  but  it  was  when  Lincoln  threw  the  ax 
aside  and  put  forth  his  strength  unhampered,  that  he  com- 
pelled the  homage  so  grateful  to  his  pride.  "  Some  of  his 
feats  "  -  Mr.  Lamon  is  our  authority  —  "  almost  surpass 
belief.  .  .  .  Richardson,  a  neighbor,  declares  that  he  could 
carry  a  load  to  which  the  strength  of  '  three  ordinary  men  ' 
would  scarcely  be  equal.  He  saw  him  quietly  pick  up  and 
walk  away  with  *  a  chicken-house,  made  of  poles  pinned 
together  and  covered,  that  weighed  at  least  six  hundred, 
if  not  much  more.'  At  another  time  the  Richardsons  were 
building  a  corn-crib.  Abe  was  there,  and,  seeing  three  or 
four  men  preparing  « sticks '  upon  which  to  carry  some 
huge  posts,  he  relieved  them  of  all  further  trouble  by 
shouldering  the  posts,  single-handed,  and  walking  away 


A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS     n 

with  them  to  the  place  where  they  were  wanted."  m  The 
Richardson  chicken-house  and  the  posts  of  the  corn-crib 
should  obviously  go  down  in  story,  side  by  side  with  those 
doors  and  posts  of  Gaza  that  were  carried,  with  similar 
ease,  on  the  shoulders  of  the  Hebrew  Hercules. 

More  remarkable  even  than  the  feats  that,  on  occa- 
sion, distinguished  Lincoln  at  work,  were  the  exploits  in 
sport,  to  which  the  applause  of  the  crowd  quickened  his 
sinews.31  Not  content  with  a  mastery  easily  maintained 
over  his  comrades  in  the  rough  games  and  contests  popu- 
lar on  the  frontier,  he  gave  exhibitions  of  strength  that 
established  his  reputation  as  an  athlete  without  a  peer. 
This  preeminence  he  held  against  all  comers  during  his 
youth  on  Pigeon  Creek  and  his  early  manhood  in  New 
Salem.32  At  the  latter  place  he  seems  to  have  reached 
the  acme  of  his  physical  powers  ;  and  some  of  his  recent 
biographers,  the  limit  of  their  credulity.  Messrs.  Lamon 
and  Herndon,  however,  whose  records  of  this  period  are 
the  most  complete,  sustain  each  other  in  the  story  that 
Lincoln  one  day  astonished  the  village  by  lifting  a  box  of 
stones  which  weighed  about  a  thousand  pounds.33  This, 
they  explain,  was  done  by  means  of  a  gearing  of  ropes 
and  straps,  with  which  he  was  harnessed  to  the  box  —  a 
method  somewhat  like  that  employed  at  the  present  time 
by  the  "  strong  men  "  who,  for  the  entertainment  of  dime- 
museum  spectators,  raise  even  heavier  weights. 

Another  of  Lincoln's  notable  performances,  for  the 
authenticity  of  which  Mr.  Herndon  also  vouches,  grew 
out  of  the  admiration  with  which  the  young  giant  was 
regarded  by  his  companions.  One  of  them,  William  G. 
Greene  by  name,  was  once  lauding  him,  so  the  story  goes, 
as  the  strongest  man  in  Illinois,  when  a  stranger,  who 
happened  to  be  present,  claimed  that  honor  for  another. 
The  dispute  led  to  a  wager  in  which  Greene  bet  that  his 
champion  could  lift  a  cask  holding  forty  gallons  of  whiskey, 
high  enough  to  take  a  drink  out  of  the  bung-hole.  In  the 
test  that  ensued,  Lincoln  with  "  apparent  ease  "  and  "  to 


12        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

the  astonishment  of  the  incredulous  stranger,"  did  as  had 
been  stipulated.  "  He  did  not,"  the  narrator  is  careful  to 
add,  "  stand  erect  and  elevate  the  barrel,  but  squatted 
down  and  lifted  it  to  his  knees,  rolling  it  over  until  his 
mouth  came  opposite  the  bung." 

"  The  bet  is  mine,"  said  Greene,  as  the  cask  was  replaced 
upon  the  floor ;  "  but  that  is  the  first  dram  of  whiskey  I 
ever  saw  you  swallow,  Abe." 

"  And  I  have  n't  swallowed  that,  you  see,"  replied  Lin- 
coln, as  he  spurted  out  the  liquor.34 

In  this  final  episode  of  the  little  story  is  to  be  found 
a  clue,  if  not  to  the  source  of  his  extraordinary  vigor,  at 
least  to  its  continued  preservation,  unimpaired  by  the 
vices  that  have  shorn  so  many  Samsons  of  their  strength.35 

Physique  was  not  the  only  criterion  of  leadership 
among  the  rough-and-ready  settlers  of  the  West.  Neither 
the  strong  man  nor  the  tall  man  was  necessarily  "  the  best 
man."  That  title  was  reserved  for  him  who,  when  there 
were  no  Indians  to  cope  with,  made  good  his  claim  to  it 
against  his  neighbors,  in  the  friendly  wrestling-matches 
of  common  occurrence,  as  well  as  in  the  more  serious, 
though  happily  less  frequent,  fights  by  which  the  back- 
woodsmen, remote  from  courts  and  constables,  were  wont 
to  settle  their  disputes.  Under  such  conditions,  the  most 
peaceable  of  men  learn  —  as  the  phrase  goes  —  to  give 
a  good  account  of  themselves.  This  was  probably  the 
case  with  our  five  generations  of  Lincoln  pathfinders  ;  for 
the  strain  of  Quaker  blood,  that  flowed  at  some  distant 
point  into  their  veins,  had  lost  much,  if  not  all,  of  its  non- 
resistant  quality  before  reaching  Abraham.38  His  father, 
although  a  man  of  quiet  disposition,  had  allowed  no  scru- 
ples to  get  between  him  and  the  adversary  who  aroused 
his  slow  anger.  A  sinewy,  well-knit  frame,  handled  with 
courage  and  agility,  had  marked  Thomas  Lincoln,  in  his 
prime,  as  a  dangerous  antagonist.  "  He  thrashed,"  says 
the  chronicle,  "  the  monstrous  bully  of  Breckinridge 
County,  in  three  minutes,  and  came  off  without  a  scratch." 


Several  other  border  Hectors,  according  to  tradition,  found 
him  to  be  invulnerable ;  and  one,  with  whom  he  had  a 
bitter  quarrel,  came  out  of  a  rough-and-tumble  combat  of 
teeth,  as  well  as  of  fists,  without  his  nose.37  Moreover,  it 
should  be  borne  in  mind  that  Abraham's  uncle  Mordecai, 
"  fond,"  as  we  are  told,  in  his  younger  days,  "  of  playing 
a  game  of  fisticuffs,"  had  been  an  inveterate  Indian 
hunter  ; ffl  and  that  the  father  of  Mordecai  and  Thomas,  he 
for  whom  Abraham  was  named,  had,  in  the  days  of  Daniel 
Boone,  been  killed  by  the  savages,  while  taking  part  in 
the  struggle  for  Kentucky.  The  scion  of  such  stock  could 
not,  under  favorable  circumstances,  lack  the  qualities  that, 
in  personal  encounters,  make  a  man  formidable.  In  fact, 
these  traits,  when  combined  with  the  intelligence  and 
strength  that  so  early  distinguished  Abraham,  rendered 
him,  as  was  to  be  expected,  almost  invincible. 

Lincoln's  advantage  during  this  pioneer  period  is  to  be 
ascribed  largely,  but  not  altogether,  to  preponderance  of 
size  and  muscle.  Those  abnormally  long  arms  and  legs, 
impelled  by  sinews  of  iron,  counted,  it  is  true,  for  much. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  was  little  that  suggested  the 
wrestler  in  his  lank,  loosely  jointed  form  with  its  thin 
neck,  contracted  chest,  and  insufficient  weight.  These 
defects  must  therefore  have  been  offset,  as  indeed  they 
were,  by  alertness,  skill,  and  —  most  important  of  all  — 
those  inherited  attributes  of  mastery  which  were  summed 
up  by  the  ancients  in  the  single  word,  stomach.  The 
spirit  with  which,  as  a  schoolboy,  Abraham  was  observed, 
in  the  opening  scene,  to  defend  himself  against  heavy 
odds,  carried  him  successfully  through  many  subsequent 
encounters.  Whether  these  were  in  sport  or  in  earnest, 
they  usually  left  him,  as  one  old  friend  expressed  it, 
"  cock  of  the  walk."  ^  Another,  who  presumably  made 
frequent  trials  in  boyhood  of  Abraham's  powers,  said  r 
"  I  was  ten  years  older,  but  I  could  n't  rassle  him  down. 
His  legs  was  too  long  for  me  to  throw  him.  He  would 
fling  one  foot  upon  my  shoulder  and  make  me  swing 


i4        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF   MEN 

corners  swift."  *  Still  others  bore  witness  to  his  pugilis- 
tic triumphs;  and  Mr.  Lincoln  himself  found  pleasure 
in  recalling  his  chaplet  of  wild  olives  many  years  later — 
even  after  the  ballots  of  a  nation  had  been  woven  into 
his  ripest  laurels.  "  All  I  had  to  do,"  said  he,  "  was  to 
extend  one  arm  to  a  man's  shoulder,  and,  with  weight 
of  body  and  strength  of  arms,  give  him  a  trip  that  gener- 
ally sent  him  sprawling  on  the  ground,  which  would  so 
astonish  him  as  to  give  him  a  quietus."41  Such  victo- 
ries had  carried  his  fame,  by  the  time  he  had  reached 
his  nineteenth  year,  throughout  the  Pigeon  Creek  clear- 
ings and  beyoud,  so  that  none  of  the  Hoosiers  who  knew 
him  or  who  knew  of  him  were  willing  —  if  the  record 
may  be  trusted  —  to  hazard  at  once  their  bones  and  their 
reputations,  in  unequal  combat  against  so  redoubtable  a 
champion. 

Debarred  from  the  wrestling-ring  as  he  had  been  ex- 
cluded from  the  spelling-match,  and  for  the  same  flatter- 
ing reason,  our  Crichton  of  the  backwoods  wore  his  honors 
as  soberly  as  could  be  expected.  He  appears,  notwithstand- 
ing the  coarse,  unrestrained  manners  of  the  people  about 
him,  to  have  misapplied  his  superiority  in  comparatively 
few  instances.  These  cases,  such  as  they  are,  should, 
nevertheless,  not  be  overlooked,  however  much  the  men- 
tion of  them  may  offend  the  sensitive  piety  of  the  hero- 
worshipers.  They  need  a  reminder,  now  and  then,  do 
these  worthy  people,  that  their  idol,  when  in  the  flesh, 
stood,  like  other  human  creatures,  on  the  earth.  If  their 
image  of  him,  therefore,  is  to  be  faithful,  its  head  may  be 
reared  to  the  clouds  in  all  the  glory  of  fine  gold,  so  they 
see  to  it  that  the  feet  are  of  clay.  What  of  sludge  lies 
hidden  at  the  bottom  of  the  character  usually  rises,  when 
agitated  by  passion,  to  the  surface.  As  this  is  observed 
in  the  case  of  ripened  manhood,  how  much  more  is  it 
to  be  looked  for  during  those  hobbledehoy  days  that, 
lying  between  youth  and  maturity,  partake  at  times  of  the 
nature  of  both  —  the  mischievousness  of  the  boy  together 


A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS     15 

with  the  pride  of  the  man.  It  was  at  such  a  period  that 
Abraham's  resentment  toward  those  against  whom  he  had 
grievances,  real  or  fancied,  sometimes  found  vent.  His 
weapons,  in  this  respect  at  least,  like  those  of  the  versatile 
young  Scot,  might  have  been  physical  or  intellectual,  at 
will ;  for,  among  other  accomplishments,  he  had  attained 
a  certain  facility  at  the  scribbling,  in  prose  and  in  doggerel 
verse,  of  the  coarsest  of  satires.  These,  thanks  to  their 
wit  no  less  than  to  their  audacity,  are  said  to  have  left 
deeper  and  more  enduring  hurts  than  even  his  fists  could 
have  inflicted.  Hence  the  few  persons  who  were  so  un- 
fortunate as  to  incur  the  satirist's  anger  were  impaled  on 
the  nib  of  his  goose-quill,  amidst  laughter  which  started 
with  the  grocery  store  loungers  and  did  not  cease  until  it 
had  echoed  and  reechoed  through  the  neighborhood  for 
many  a  day.  That  some  of  these  lampoons  were  indelicate, 
even  indecent,  need  not  be  dwelt  upon  here.  It  is  suffi- 
cient to  notice  that  they  were  well  adapted  to  their  pur- 
pose, and  that  the  author  employed  them  as  a  means  of 
laying  low  those  whom  he  might  not  otherwise  have  over- 
come. 

The  victims  of  these  attacks  did  not,  for  obvious  rea- 
sons, retaliate  in  kind.  Nor  might  they  hope,  on  any  field, 
to  humiliate  this  masterful  "  fellow,  who  could  both  write 
and  fight  and  in  both  was  equally  skilful."  One  quarrel, 
however,  waxed  so  hot  that,  by  common  consent,  nothing 
would  cool  the  fevered  situation  but  bloodletting.  And 
this  is  how  it  happened.  Abraham's  only  sister  had  died 
shortly  after  her  marriage  to  Aaron  Grigsby.  Thereupon 
arose  between  the  Grigsby  s  and  the  Lin  coins  a  feeling  of 
ill-will,  the  cause  of  which  is  not  clear,  nor  is  it  material 
now.  It  was  important  enough  then  to  result  in  the  exclu- 
sion of  the  tall  young  brother-in-law  from  the  joint  wed- 
ding celebration  of  Aaron's  two  brothers — a  memorable 
entertainment,  full  to  overflowing  with  feasting,  dancing, 
and  merry-making.  Such  a  frolic  was  not  to  be  had  every 
day,  and  Abraham's  regret  that  he  was  not  present  to 


1 6        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

lead  the  fun,  as  was  his  wont,  must  have  been  keen. 
The  slight  rexed  him  even  more  than  did  the  disap- 
pointment, for  the  Grigsbys  constituted  "the  leading 
family  "  in  the  community.  To  punish  them,  he  forthwith 
wrote  The  First  Chronicles  of  Reuben,  a  narration  in 
mock-scriptural  phrase,  of  an  indelicate  prank  that  is  said 
to  have  been  played  upon  the  young  wedded  couples,  at 
his  instigation.42  The  public  ridicule  which  this  brought 
down  upon  the  family  failed  to  appease  the  satirist's 
wounded  self-love ;  and  he  followed  it,  in  rhyme,  with  an 
onslaught  even  more  stinging.  The  outraged  honor  of  the 
Grigsbys  demanded  satisfaction  according  to  the  Pigeon 
Creek  code ;  so  the  eldest  son,  William,  throwing  discre- 
tion to  the  winds,  issued  a  challenge  for  a  fight,  which 
their  tormentor  readily  accepted. 

When  the  combatants  were  about  to  enter  the  ring, 
Abraham  chivalrously  announced  that  as  his  antagonist 
was  confessedly  his  inferior  in  every  respect,  he  would 
forego  the  pleasure  of  thrashing  him,  and  would  let  his 
step-brother,  John,  do  battle  in  his  stead.  This  offer, 
having,  together  with  other  magnanimous  declarations, 
been  applauded  by  the  spectators,  was  accepted  by 
Grigsby.  The  fight  then  began ;  but  alas !  for  Abraham's 
good  resolutions.  They  were  not  proof  against  his  cham- 
pion's defeat.  By  a  singular  coincidence,  moreover,  Lin- 
coln's biographers,  as  well  as  he,  deviate  just  a  trifle,  at 
this  point,  from  the  straight  course ;  that  is  to  say,  all 
of  them  save  Mr.  Lamon,  who  sticks  to  his  text,  and,  in 
the  face  of  popular  disapproval,  describes  the  unworthy 
scene  which  ensued.  "John  started  out  with  fine  pluck 
and  spirit,"  says  he,  "but  in  a  little  while  Billy  got  in 
some  clever  hits,  and  Abe  began  to  exhibit  symptoms  of 
great  uneasiness.  Another  pass  or  two,  and  John  flagged 
quite  decidedly,  and  it  became  evident  that  Abe  was 
anxiously  casting  about  for  some  pretext  to  break  the 
ring.  At  length,  when  John  was  fairly  down  and  Billy  on 
top,  and  all  the  spectators  cheering,  swearing,  and  pressing 


A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS     17 

up  to  the  very  edge  of  the  ring,  Abe  cried  out  that  Bill 
Boland  showed  foul  play,  and,  bursting  out  of  the  crowd, 
seized  Grigsby  by  the  heels,  and  flung  him  off.  Having 
righted  John  and  cleared  the  battle-ground  of  all  oppo- 
nents, he  swung  a  whiskey  bottle  over  his  head,  and  swore 
that  he  was  '  the  big  buck  of  the  lick.'  It  seems  that 
nobody  of  the  Grigsby  faction,  not  one  in  that  large  assem- 
bly of  bullies,  cared  to  encounter  the  sweep  of  Abe's  tre- 
mendously long  and  muscular  arms,  and  so  he  remained 
master  of  '  the  lick.'  He  was  not  content,  however,  with 
a  naked  triumph,  but  vaunted  himself  in  the  most  offen- 
sive manner.  He  singled  out  the  victorious  but  cheated 
Billy  and,  making  sundry  hostile  demonstrations,  declared 
that  he  could  whip  him  then  and  there.  Billy  meekly  said 
he  did  not  doubt  that,  but  that  if  Abe  would  make  things 
even  between  them  by  fighting  with  pistols,  he  would  not 
be  slow  to  grant  him  a  meeting.  But  Abe  replied  that  he 
was  not  going  to  fool  away  his  life  on  a  single  shot ;  and 
so  Billy  was  fain  to  put  up  with  the  poor  satisfaction  he 
had  already  received." 43  The  question  naturally  suggested, 
as  to  whether  Abraham  was  justified  in  his  behavior, 
may  be  disregarded  here.  Not  so,  the  account  of  the 
incident  itself,  which,  irrespective  of  ethics  or  good  taste, 
is  essential  to  an  understanding  of  what  may  be  termed 
the  aggressive  side  of  his  character,  during  these  formative 
days. 

Equally  significant,  though  not  so  discreditable  as  the 
Grigsby  broil,  was  an  encounter  in  which  young  Lincoln 
figured  not  long  after  this.  It  brings  us  to  his  river  life, 
with  the  novel  responsibilities  and  dangers  that  must  have 
entered  —  how  much  or  how  little  no  one  can  say  —  into 
the  making  of  the  master.  Like  so  many  native  Kentuck- 
ians,  he  evinced,  while  still  a  boy,  an  aptitude  for  the 
management  of  a  boat  among  the  uncertain  currents  of 
the  Ohio.  This  made  him  particularly  useful  to  James 
Taylor,  the  ferry-keeper  at  the  mouth  of  Anderson's  Creek, 
to  whom  he  was  hired  in  his  seventeenth  year  ;  but,  what 


18        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

was  of  greater  importance,  it  secured  to  him,  three  years 
later,  his  first  voyage  down  the  Mississippi.44  A  trading 
expedition  to  the  towns  on  the  banks  of  the  river  as  far 
as  New  Orleans  was  projected,  after  the  manner  of  the 
times,  by  James  Gentry,  the  storekeeper  in  Gentryville, 
near  by.  His  son,  Allen,  was  placed  in  charge  of  a  flat- 
boat,  with  a  cargo  of  produce,  and  Lincoln  was  hired  to 
accompany  him  as  bow-hand.45 

The  trip  was,  so  far  as  is  known,  prosperous  and  un- 
eventful, until  the  voyagers  tied  up,  one  night,  at  the 
plantation  of  Madame  Duchesne,  a  few  miles  below  Baton 
Rouge.  A  gang  of  her  slaves,  seven  in  number,  thinking, 
no  doubt,  that  to  rob  and  perhaps  to  murder  the  two  boys 
while  they  slept  would  be  a  simple  affair,  boarded  the 
boat.  Their  shuffling  footsteps  aroused  Allen,  who,  to 
frighten  them  off,  shouted,  "  Bring  the  guns,  Lincoln  1 
Shoot  them !  "  The  big  bow-hand  responded  promptly, 
but,  for  reasons  that  we  need  not  stop  to  explain,  he 
brought  no  guns.  He  did  bring  what  must  have  been 
very  like  a  grievous  crab-tree  cudgel,  with  which,  after 
the  fashion  of  the  giant  in  the  allegory,  he  laid  about 
him  so  impartially  that  those  of  the  negroes  who  were 
not  tumbled  overboard  took  to  their  heels.  As  they  fled, 
he  carried  the  war  into  Africa,  pursuing  them,  with 
Gentry,  in  the  darkness  for  some  distance.  Then,  bleed- 
ing but  triumphant,  the  boys  hastened  back,  and  to  avoid 
a  return  of  the  enemy  in  force,  they  speedily,  as  Mr.  Lin- 
coln himself  once,  in  nautical  phraseology,  expressed  it, 
"  cut  cable,  weighed  anchor,  and  left."  This  was  the  first 
occasion  on  which  the  negro  question  brought  itself  to  his 
attention  forcibly.  It  may  be  said  to  have  left  its  impres- 
sion in  more  ways  than  one.  For,  many  years  afterward, 
he  showed  his  friends  the  scar  on  his  forehead  from  a 
wound  received  in  the  fracas ;  and  still  later,  when  he 
briefly  put  before  a  nation  the  important  incidents  of  his 
life,  a  place  was  found  for  that  midnight  victory  over 
brute  strength  and  superior  numbers.48 


A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS     19 

During  the  ensuing  few  years,  the  young  boatman 
must  have  kept  his  laurels  green.  At  least,  he  did  not, 
even  in  the  first  absorbing  struggles  of  life  on  his  own 
account,  suffer  them  to  wither.  His  reputation  as  a 
wrestler  appears  to  have  preceded  him  to  Thomas  Lincoln's 
last  home,  in  Coles  County,  Illinois,  when  Abraham,  after 
his  second  flat-boat  voyage  down  the  Mississippi  in  the 
summer  of  1831,  came  there  on  a  brief  visit.  The  arri- 
val of  so  noted  a  wrestler  called  for  action  on  the  part  of 
Daniel  Needham,  the  local  champion.  This  worthy  lost 
no  time  in  issuing  a  challenge,  which  the  newcomer  as 
promptly  accepted.  In  the  public  contest  that  ensued,  the 
boatman  grassed  his  opponent  twice  with  such  ease  as  to 
arouse  the  latter's  anger  and  the  delight  of  the  spectators. 

"Lincoln,"  he  shouted,  "you  have  thrown  me  twice, 
but  you  can't  whip  me!  " 

"  Needham,"  was  the  answer,  "  are  you  satisfied  that  I 
can  throw  you?  If  you  are  not,  and  must  be  convinced 
through  a  thrashing,  I  will  do  that  too,  for  your  sake." 

Upon  second  thought,  the  defeated  bully,  who  had 
no  doubt  expected  to  overawe  his  antagonist  with  the 
threat  of  a  fight,  concluded  that  he  was  "  satisfied,"  and 
his  honors  reverted  to  Lincoln.47 

Several  weeks  later,  the  young  man,  then  in  his  twenty- 
third  year,  entered  upon  his  duties  as  clerk  of  Den- 
ton  Offutt's  country  store,  which  had  just  been  opened 
at  New  Salem,  in  western  Illinois.  The  village  was  in- 
fested by  a  lawless,  rollicking  set  of  rowdies  from  a 
neighboring  settlement,  known  as  "  the  Clary's  Grove 
boys."  Easy-going  in  everything  save  mischief,  and 
always  ready  on  the  shortest  possible  notice  for  sport  or 
riot,  they  dominated  the  place  at  an  expenditure  of  energy 
that  would  have  worked  wonders  had  it  not  been  mis- 
applied. As  it  was,  they  lived  up  to  certain  crude  notions 
of  chivalry  that  led  them,  at  times,  into  acts  of  generos- 
ity toward  the  village  folk  ;  but  kindness  to  the  stranger 
within  their  gates  had  no  place,  be  it  understood,  in  their 


20        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF   MEN 

code.  On  the  contrary,  the  desire  to  test  a  newcomer's 
mettle  appears  to  have  prompted  conduct  the  reverse  of 
kind.  When  their  impertinent  challenges  to  contests  of 
various  sorts  were  not  acceptable  to  a  stranger,  he  was 
asked  to  say  what  he  would  do  in  case  another  gentleman 
should  pull  his  nose  or  otherwise  make  free  with  him. 
"  If,"  says  the  sympathetic  historian,  "  he  did  not  seem 
entirely  decided  in  his  views  as  to  what  should  properly 
be  done  in  such  a  contingency,  perhaps  he  would  be 
nailed  in  a  hogshead  and  rolled  down  New  Salem  hill ; 
perhaps  his  ideas  would  be  brightened  by  a  brief  ducking 
in  the  Sangamon  ;  or  perhaps  he  would  be  scoffed,  kicked, 
and  cuffed  by  a  great  number  of  persons  in  concert  until 
he  reached  the  confines  of  the  village,  and  then  turned 
adrift  as  being  unfit  company  for  the  people  of  that  settle- 
ment. If,  however,  the  stranger  consented  to  engage  in  a 
tussle  with  one  of  his  persecutors,  it  was  usually  arranged 
that  there  should  be  foul  play,  with  nameless  impositions 
and  insults,  which  would  inevitably  change  the  affair  into 
a  fight."  These  gentle  ruffians  had  either  taken  the  mea- 
sure of  Offutt's  tall  clerk,  or  had  accepted  the  standing 
with  which  rumor  invested  him.  At  all  events,  they  made 
no  attempt  "  to  naturalize  "  him,  as  they  termed  it ;  and 
Lincoln  might  have  enjoyed  entire  immunity  had  it  not 
been  for  the  boastful  tongue  of  his  employer. 

Denton  Offutt,  a  good-hearted,  talkative,  reckless  specu- 
lator, of  the  Colonel  Sellers  type,  regarded  Lincoln  as 
the  most  promising  of  his  many  investments.  His  ad- 
miration for  the  young  fellow,  whom  he  had  previously 
employed  as  a  boatman,  was,  unlike  most  of  his  fads, 
based  upon  experience.  Indeed,  he  had  sounded  the 
depths  of  Lincoln's  talents,  mental  as  well  as  physical, 
with  remarkable  precision.  From  repeated  predictions  of 
his  protege's  destined  greatness,  Offutt  usually  turned  to 
the  more  timely  declaration  that  Abe  could  whip  or  throw 
any  man  in  Sangamon  County.  Such  a  boast  could  of 
course  not  go  long  unchallenged  in  the  hearing  of  "  the 


A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS     21 

Clary's  Grove  boys."  Presently  Bill  Clary  himself  laid 
a  wager  of  ten  dollars  with  Offutt,  matching  against  Lin- 
coln the  biggest  bruiser  of  the  gang,  Jack  Armstrong  by 
name,  a  sort  of  local  Brom  Bones,  who  is  described  as  "  a 
powerful  twister,  square  built  and  strong  as  an  ox."  The 
proposed  contest,  in  view,  perhaps,  of  "  the  boys' "  reputed 
disregard  of  fair  play,  had  no  charms  for  the  new  clerk. 
He  would  gladly  have  kept  clear  of  it,  but  Offutt  had 
committed  him  so  far  that  he  could  not  refuse  without  in- 
curring the  charge  of  cowardice.  Moreover,  as  the  gang 
had  looted  several  stores  of  the  village,  they  would  in  all 
probability  not  have  spared  Offutt's  for  any  length  of 
time  after  they  had  ceased  to  respect  the  clerk  in  charge. 
Lincoln  accordingly  consented,  stipulating,  however,  that 
the  match  was  to  be  a  friendly  one  and  fairly  conducted. 
All  New  Salem,  with  money,  drinks,  and  portable 
property  of  various  kinds  staked  on  the  result,  gathered  at 
the  ring.  The  contestants  were  well  matched.  They  strug- 
gled and  strained,  for  some  time,  with  seemingly  equal 
strength  and  equal  skill.  They  appear  to  have  resembled 
the  mighty  two  who  wrestled  before  Achilles,  as 

"  with  vigorous  arms 

They  clasped  each  other,  locked  like  rafters  framed 
By  some  wise  builder  for  the  lofty  roof 
Of  a  great  mansion  proof  against  the  winds. 
Then  their  backs  creaked  beneath  the  powerful  strain 
Of  their  strong  hands  ;  the  sweat  ran  down  their  limbs; 
Large  whelks  upon  their  sides  and  shoulders  rose, 
Crimson  with  blood.    Still  eagerly  they  strove 
For  victory  and  the  tripod.   Yet  in  vain 
Ulysses  labored  to  supplant  his  foe, 
And  throw  him  to  the  ground,  and  equally 
Did  Ajax  strive  in  vain,  for  with  sheer  strength 
Ulysses  foiled  his  efforts." 

But  here,  we  grieve  to  say,  the  parallel,  such  as  it  wag, 
ceased.  When  the  Homer  of  the  prairies  sings  the  story 
of  the  later  combat,  he  will  not,  if  truth  as  well  as  beauty 
has  a  claim  upon  him,  picture  his  champions  leaving  the 


ii        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF   MEN 

field,  as  did  the  Greek  heroes,  with  gallantly  divided 
honors.  Such  a  conclusion,  indeed,  appeared  fitting  to 
Lincoln ;  for,  when  neither  he  nor  the  man  from  the 
Grove  seemed  able  to  prevail  he  said :  — 

**  Now,  Jack,  let 's  quit.  You  can't  throw  me,  and  I 
can't  throw  you." 

Armstrong,  rendered  desperate  by  his  failure  and  urged 
on  by  the  clamor  of  his  friends,  instead  of  answering, 
hurled  himself  upon  Lincoln  to  get  a  foul  hold.  The 
latter,  enraged  at  the  trick,  seized  the  fellow  by  the  throat 
and,  putting  forth  all  his  strength,  "  shook  him,"  as  the 
chronicler  tells  us,  "like  a  rag."  Some  of  "the  boys" 
hurried  to  their  leader's  assistance,  while  others  rushed 
to  Offutt  and  demanded  the  stakes.  Above  the  tumult 
could  be  heard  Lincoln's  voice  ordering  Offutt  not  to  pay, 
and  declaring  his  willingness  to  fight  all  Clary's  Grove, 
if  necessary.  He  had,  in  fact,  backed  against  the  store  to 
meet  the  gang's  attack.  At  that  moment,  it  might  have 
gone  hard  with  him  against  such  odds,  had  not  the  leading 
citizen  of  the  place  interfered.  Then  Armstrong,  having 
recovered  breath,  expressed  his  admiration  of  so  much 
pluck  and  muscle,  in  this  outburst :  — 

"  Boys,  Abe  Lincoln  is  the  best  fellow  that  ever  broke 
into  this  settlement  I  He  shall  be  one  of  us." 

And  one  of  them,  in  a  sense  at  least,  Lincoln  became. 
His  quondam  opponent,  like  most  men  of  his  class,  knew 
no  middle  ground  between  enmity  and  affection.  Ever 
afterward,  Armstrong,  together  with  all  that  he  had,  was 
at  Lincoln's  command,  and  the  rest  of  "  the  Clary's  Grove 
boys  "  passed  with  their  chief  under  the  yoke." 

How  Lincoln  exercised  his  influence  over  these  rou<rh 

o 

fellows  is  illustrated  by  an  incident  that  occurred  not  long 
after  the  fight.  A  stranger  to  the  village  was  attacked 
one  day,  in  a  spirit  of  frolic,  by  the  gang,  under  Arm- 
strong's leadership.  Jack  applied  to  him  a  string  of  epi- 
thets, among  which  "  coward  "  and  "  damned  liar  "  were 
the  least  objectionable.  The  victim  of  this  onslaught, 


A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS     23 

finding  himself  at  a  disadvantage,  backed  up  to  a  wood- 
pile, seized  a  stick,  and  struck  Armstrong  a  blow  that 
felled  him.  Regaining  his  feet,  Jack  rushed  forward  to 
punish  the  stranger,  when  Lincoln,  who  happened  upon 
the  scene,  persuaded  "  the  boys  "  to  make  him  arbitrator 
of  the  difficulty. 

"  Well,  Jack,"  he  asked,  proceeding  in  Socratic  fashion, 
"what  did  you  say  to  the  man?"  Armstrong  repeated 
his  language. 

"Well,  Jack,"  was  the  next  question,  "if  you  were  a 
stranger  in  a  strange  place,  as  this  man  is,  and  you  were 
called  a  damned  liar,  and  so  forth,  what  would  you  do  ?  " 

"  Whip  him,  by  God !  "  was  the  ready  answer. 

"Then  this  man,"  said  the  arbitrator,  "has  done  no 
more  to  you  than  you  would  have  done  to  him." 

Even  Armstrong  felt  the  force  of  the  golden  rule  when 
so  lucidly  applied  by  the  only  man  whose  interference 
he  would  not  resent. 

"Well,  Abe,"  said  he,  taking  the  stranger  by  the 
hand,  "  it 's  all  right."  Then,  in  accordance  with  the 
time-honored  custom,  for  such  occasions  established,  he 
treated.49 

The  pastimes  of  these  wild  young  fellows,  no  less  than 
their  quarrels,  suffered  a  change  under  the  pressure  of 
Lincoln's  authority.  He  vetoed  one  of  the  gang's  favor- 
ite diversions,  that  of  rolling  persons  who  had  incurred 
their  displeasure  down  a  perilously  steep  hill  in  a  hogs- 
head. A  form  of  amusement  so  rich  in  possibilities,  Jack 
and  his  playful  savages  were  disinclined  to  relinquish.  If 
they  were  not  to  have  their  little  fun,  now  and  then,  with 
an  unwilling  victim,  said  they,  what  harm  could  there  be 
in  rolling  one  that  was  willing  ?  Accordingly,  an  elderly 
toper  was  hired  by  Armstrong  to  make  the  descent,  for  a 
gallon  of  whiskey.  Even  this  unprecedented  concession 
to  decorum  did  not,  strangely  enough,  satisfy  the  censor. 
He  insisted  that  the  sport  —  brutal  under  any  conditions 
—  must  be  stopped,  and  stopped  it  was.50  On  another 


24        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

occasion,  when  the  spirit  of  deviltry  animated  an  election 
celebration,  "the  boys"  enticed  a  fellow,  endowed  with 
more  pluck  than  sense,  into  a  bet  that  he  could  ride 
through  their  bonfire,  on  his  pony.  The  animal  trotted 
nimbly  enough  up  to  the  edge  of  the  blaze,  where  he 
balked  and  tossed  his  rider  headforemost  into  the  flames. 
The  affair  had  been  observed  by  Lincoln,  who,  laughing 
in  spite  of  himself,  ran  to  the  fellow's  assistance.  "  You 
have  carried  this  thing  far  enough,"  he  said  angrily  to 
Armstrong.  The  big  rowdy,  upon  the  arrival  of  his 
"conscience,"  became  so  contrite  that,  not  content  with 
leading  the  sufferer  to  a  doctor  to  have  the  burns  dressed, 
he  took  him  to  his  own  cabin  for  the  night,  and  sent  him 
home  the  next  morning,  after  giving  him  a  breakfast  and 
a  sealskin  cap.61 

The  encounters  of  Offutt's  brawny  clerk  with  the  exu- 
berant young  men  of  New  Salem,  in  behalf  of  law  and 
order,  were  not  always,  even  ostensibly,  of  a  friendly 
character.  One  day,  while  waiting  upon  some  women  in 
the  store,  he  was  annoyed  at  the  loud  profanity  of  a  fellow 
who  made  a  practice  of  lounging  about  the  place.  Lincoln, 
leaning  over  the  counter,  asked  him,  as  ladies  were  present, 
not  to  use  offensive  language.  The  other  retorted  that  he 
would  talk  as  he  pleased,  and  intimated  that  the  clerk  was 
not  man  enough  to  check  him.  His  abuse  continued  until 
the  women  had  left  the  store.  Then  Lincoln,  stepping 
forward,  said :  — 

"Well,  if  you  must  be  whipped,  I  suppose  I  may  as 
well  whip  you  as  any  other  man." 

The  offender,  nothing  loath,  followed  his  critic  out  of 
doors,  where  ensued  a  contest,  brief  but  decisive.  Throw- 
ing the  fellow  to  the  ground,  Lincoln  held  him  down 
with  one  hand,  while  with  the  other  he  rubbed  a  bunch 
of  the  smart-weed,  which  grew  within  reach,  into  the  up- 
turned face  and  eyes.  The  man  of  oaths  bellowed  with 
pain,  while  he  of  the  protests,  having  administered  plenary 
discipline,  hastened  for  water  and  tenderly  bathed  the 


A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS     25 

aching  parts.  These  ministrations  were  accompanied,  it 
is  surmised,  by  "  quaint  admonition,"  from  which  the  suf- 
ferer may  be  assumed  to  have  profited.  For  he  became, 
as  we  are  told,  the  life-long  friend  of  the  man  who  tutored 
him  thus  violently  in  gentle  manners.52 

During  these  early  days  of  "  wooling  and  pulling," 
to  use  one  of  Lincoln's  phrases,  his  conquests  over  the 
hearts  of  his  antagonists  were,  in  most  cases,  as  complete 
as  his  triumphs  over  their  bodies.  To  defeat  a  man  in  such 
a  manner  as  to  compel  his  lasting  friendship,  no  less  than 
his  respect,  was  apparently  easy  for  this  manly  young 
fellow.  A  singularly  fine  character  had  already,  undevel- 
oped though  it  was,  manifested  itself,  here  and  there,  in 
traits  which  shone  through  his  commonplace  life  like  veins 
of  gold  in  a  lump  of  quartz.  To  inquire  how  these  quali- 
ties came  to  enter  into  the  make-up  of  a  lad  reared  in  the 
fringe  of  the  western  wilderness,  is  as  foreign  to  the 
purpose  of  this  study  as  would  be  an  effort  to  account,  in 
an  essay  on  the  currency,  for  the  presence  of  the  precious 
metal  in  a  dirty  clod.  The  social  no  less  than  the  physical 
marvel  might  draw  us  fruitlessly  far  afield.  Suffice  it  to 
say  that  Lincoln  did,  even  at  this  time,  have  moral  as 
well  as  muscular  strength,  and  that  the  ignorant,  rough,  or 
vicious  men  among  whom  he  grew  to  manhood  felt  —  not 
always  consciously,  perhaps  —  the  sway  of  both.  These 
people,  admirers  of  brute  force  though  they  were,  would 
assuredly  not  have  fallen  with  such  complete  self-surrender 
under  the  dominion  of  this  powerful  hand,  had  it  not  been 
for  the  corresponding  superiority  of  the  head  and  the 
heart  by  which  it  was  controlled.  A  combination  so  strik- 
ing had  naturally  led  Lincoln's  schoolmates  to  lay  their 
boyish  differences  before  him ;  and,  as  he  advanced  in  years, 
it  caused  his  associates  to  appoint  him  umpire  of  their 
sports,  arbitrator  of  their  disputes,  referee  of  their  un- 
avoidable fights,  and  authority  in  general.  The  decisions, 
let  us  add,  were  not  only  remarkable  for  their  fairness,  but 
for  the  promptness,  as  well,  with  which  they  were  enforced 


26         LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

by  the  judge.  He  did  not  hesitate,  moreover,  to  act  in  this 
capacity  without  waiting  for  an  invitation  from  the  per- 
sons  most  concerned.  Rushing  between  two  fighting  men, 
he  would  fling  them  apart  and  insist  upon  settling  their 
quarrel  for  them  amicably.  Good  feeling,  indeed,  pervaded 
most,  if  not  all,  of  young  Lincoln's  muscular  activities. 
Such  advantages  as  he  possessed  over  others  were  so 
rarely  abused,  on  the  one  hand,  and  were  so  commonly 
employed  with  credit,  on  the  other,  that  an  account  of  his 
prowess  in  the  ring,  which  did  not  emphasize  the  facts, 
would  be  misleading.53  To  understand  the  Lincoln  of  this 
period,  one  must  bear  in  mind  that  side  by  side  with  his 
pugilistic  victories  were  these  less  palpable,  but  possibly 
more  important,  triumphs  of  character.  "  It  is  excellent 
to  have  a  giant's  strength,"  and  excellent  to  use  it  as  this 
giant  did. 

To  the  end  of  his  life,  Mr.  Lincoln  evinced  an  almost 
childish  pride  in  his  superior  physique.  As  he  stood, 
during  the  Civil  War,  watching,  from  the  Potomac  front 
of  the  Treasury,  a  forest  on  the  Virginia  hills  fall  before 
the  blows  of  a  regiment  of  Maine  lumbermen,  he  ex- 
claimed :  — 

"  I  don't  believe  that  there  is  a  man  in  that  regiment 
with  longer  arms  than  mine,  or  who  can  swing  an  ax  bet- 
ter than  I  can.  By  jings !  I  should  like  to  change  works 
with  one  of  them."  54 

Indeed,  the  strength  that  had  contributed  to  his  early 
distinction  among  the  settlers  of  the  backwoods  was  dis- 
played to  the  more  refined  associates  of  his  later  career 
frequently  enough,  though  not  always  opportunely.  When 
ever  an  ax  happened  to  be  within  the  President's  reach, 
his  hand  grasped  it  in  some  exhibition  of  dexterity  or 
endurance.  Thus,  after  he  had  insisted  on  shaking  hands, 
one  day,  with  a  considerable  number  of  the  sick  and 
wounded  soldiers  in  the  City  Point  hospital,  when  those 
who  were  with  him  expressed  fears  that  he  might  be  dis- 
abled by  the  exertion,  he  is  said  to  have  answered,  "  The 


A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS     27 

hardships  of  my  early  life  gave  me  strong  muscles."  Then, 
stepping  through  the  open  doorway,  he  took  up  a  large, 
heavy  ax  that  lay  near  a  log,  and,  chopping  vigorously, 
sent  the  chips  flying  in  all  directions.  Presently  he 
stopped  and,  with  arm  extended  at  full  length,  held  out 
the  ax  horizontally  by  the  extreme  end  of  the  handle. 
"  Strong  men,  who  looked  on,"  so  runs  the  tale,  "  —  men 
accustomed  to  manual  labor  —  could  not  hold  the  same 
ax  in  that  position  for  a  moment."55  At  another  time, 
some  officers  and  newspaper  correspondents  were  returning 
with  him  from  the  Navy  Yard,  where  they  had  gone  to 
view  the  testing  of  certain  new  artillery  inventions.  As 
they  sat  on  the  steamer  discussing  what  they  had  seen, 
the  President  caught  sight  of  some  axes  that  hung  outside 
of  the  cabin.  Walking  over  to  where  the  implements  were, 
he  said :  — 

"  You  may  talk  about  your  Raphael  repeaters  and  your 
eleven-inch  Dahlgrens,  but  I  guess  I  understand  that  there 
institution  as  well  as  anything  else.  There  was  a  time 
when  I  could  hold  out  one  of  these  things  at  arm's 
length." 

Whereupon,  he  took  down  one  of  the  axes  and  held  it 
as  has  been  described.  Several  of  the  party  tried  to  imi- 
tate him,  but  none  succeeded.  "  When  I  was  eighteen 
years  of  age  I  could  do  this,"  said  Mr.  Lincoln,  on  a  sim- 
ilar occasion,  to  General  Egbert  L.  Viele,  "  and  I  have 
never  seen  the  day  since  that  I  could  not  do  it."  This 
was,  in  fact,  one  of  his  favorite  feats.  He  seemed  to  enjoy 
the  discomfiture  of  those  who  made  unsuccessful  efforts 
to  equal  it,  no  less  than  the  admiration  that  it  never  failed 
to  excite  in  the  beholders.56 

Mr.  Lincoln's  triumphs  of  physical  strength  led  him 
into  the  practice  of  almost  unconsciously  comparing  him- 
self, in  this  respect,  with  other  men.  The  habit  is  well 
illustrated  in  an  incident  related  by  Governor  John 
Wesley  Hoyt,  for  many  years  secretary  and  manager  of 
the  Wisconsin  State  Agricultural  Society.  He  escorted 


28         LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

Lincoln,  in  the  autumn  of  1859,  through  the  fair  of  the 
association,  at  which  the  Illinois  visitor  had  made  the  ad- 
dress. They  spent  some  time  in  one  of  the  tents,  watch- 
ing the  performance  of  a  "strong  man,"  who  tossed  about 
huge  iron  balls,  catching  and  rolling  them  on  his  arms  and 
back  with  remarkable  brawn  and  agility.  The  exhibition 
appeared  to  interest  the  orator  of  the  day  so  intensely 
that,  at  its  conclusion,  the  manager  introduced  the  athlete 
to  him.  Mr.  Lincoln  stood  looking  down  upon  the  man, 
who  was  very  short,  as  if  wondering  that  one  so  much 
smaller  than  he  could  be  so  much  stronger.  Then  he  said 
abruptly,  in  his  quaint  fashion,  "  Why,  I  could  lick  salt 
off  the  top  of  your  hat."  "  Nor  was  this  the  only  occasion 
on  which  he  remarked  smallness  of  stature.58  His  first 
meeting  with  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  in  the  Illinois  legisla- 
ture of  1834,59  was  memorable  not,  as  might  be  expected, 
for  any  impression  which  the  "  Little  Giant's  "  genius 
made  upon  him,  but  for  his  comment  on  the  undersized 
Vermonter  as  "  the  least  man  "  that  he  had  ever  seen.80 

So,  in  Congress,  during  the  winter  of  1848,  when  an- 
other small  great  man,  Alexander  H.  Stephens  of  Georgia, 
moved  Mr.  Lincoln  to  tears  by  "  the  very  best  speech  of 
an  hour's  length  "  that  he  had  heard,  he  did  not,  in  writ- 
ing about  it  to  his  partner,  Mr.  Herndon,  forget  to  describe 
the  speaker  as  "a  little,  slim,  pale-faced,  consumptive 
man."  61  The  diminutive  orator  and  his  tall  admirer  met 
seventeen  years  later,  at  the  Hampton  Roads  Conference, 
under  strangely  changed  conditions  —  the  one  as  an  envoy 
of  the  dying  but  still  struggling  Confederacy,  the  other 
as  the  President  of  the  Union.  A  momentous  meeting, 
this.  Upon  its  issue  depended  peace  or  continued  blood- 
shed. Yet  Mr.  Lincoln  was  not  so  much  engrossed  in  the 
serious  questions  under  consideration  as  to  put  aside  en- 
tirely his  interest  in  Mr.  Stephens's  size.  The  little  com- 
missioner had  protected  his  frail  body  against  the  mid- 
winter cold  with  a  profusion  of  overcoats  and  wraps,  which, 
after  reaching  the  River  Queen's  warm  cabin,  he  peeled 


A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS    29 

off,  layer  by  layer.  As  the  wearer  finally  emerged,  the 
President  is  said  to  have  remarked  in  an  aside  to  the 
Secretary  of  State,  who  was  with  him,  "  Seward,  that  is 
the  largest  shucking  for  so  small  a  nubbin  that  I  ever 
saw."  82  This  particular  nubbin,  meagre  though  it  was, 
the  speaker  held  in  high  esteem  ;  still,  here,  as  in  the  case 
of  Douglas,  he  appears  to  have  had  a  complacent  sense  of 
his  own  more  ample  proportions.63 

The  sight  of  a  tall  man  usually  aroused  in  Mr.  Lincoln 
a  desire  to  know  whether  he  or  the  other  had  the  more 
inches.  This  hobby  he  sought  to  gratify,  in  season  and 
out,  concern,  as  it  might,  a  chance  visitor  from  the 
country,  or  a  dignified  Senator.  Indeed,  at  what  was,  per- 
haps, one  of  the  most  impressive  moments  of  his  life,  when 
face  to  face  with  some  of  the  leading  public  men  of  the 
day,  the  question,  "Who  is  the  taller?"  seemed  —  if  one 
may  judge  solely  by  what  happened  —  to  be  uppermost  in 
his  mind.  He  had  just  responded  in  a  few  formal  words 
to  the  official  notification  of  his  first  nomination  for  the 
presidency,  brought  to  his  Springfield  home  by  the  com- 
mittee of  the  Chicago  Convention ;  and  he  had  started, 
under  the  guidance  of  the  chairman,  the  Hon.  George 
Ashmun,  to  make  the  rounds  of  the  delegation,  for  per- 
sonal introductions.  The  party  included  such  men  as 
William  M.  Evarts,  Carl  Schurz,  George  S.  Bout  well, 
John  Albion  Andrew,  Gideon  Welles,  Caleb  B.  Smith, 
William  D.  Kelley,  Francis  P.  Blair,  Sr.,  David  K.  Cart- 
ter,  and  Norman  B.  Judd  ;  but  his  eye  rested  upon  the 
most  commanding  figure  of  all,  that  of  Edwin  Dennison 
Morgan,  then  Governor  of  New  York  and  chairman  of 
the  National  Republican  Executive  Committee.  Before 
him  Mr.  Lincoln  stopped  first  and,  with  a  cordial  greet- 
ing, said :  — 

"  Pray,  Governor,  how  tall  may  you  be  ?  " 

"  Nearly  six  feet  three,"  answered  the  great  man  from 
the  Empire  State. 

An  embarrassing  silence  that  followed  was  relieved  by 


30        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

Judge  Kelley,  the  delegate  from  Pennsylvania,  who  was 
somewhat  of  a  poplar,  himself.  "  And  pray,  Mr.  Lincoln," 
said  he,  "  how  tall  may  you  be  ?  " 

"Six  feet  four,"  answered  the  candidate,  taking  the 
benefit  of  a  doubtful  fraction.  Whereupon  the  Judge,  as 
he  relates,  bowed  and  said  :  — 

"  Pennsylvania  bows  humbly  before  New  York,  but 
still  more  humbly  before  Illinois.  Mr.  Lincoln,  is  it  not 
curious  that  I,  who  for  the  last  twelve  years  have  yearned 
for  a  President  to  whom  I  might  look  up,  should  have 
found  one  here  in  a  State  where  so  many  people  believe 
they  grow  nothing  but  *  Little  Giants '  ?  "  M 

Mr.  Lincoln  was  not  usually  content,  as  in  this  instance, 
to  take  the  word  of  tall  men  as  to  their  height.  So  im- 
portant a  matter,  it  appears,  could  be  determined  to  his 
satisfaction  by  actual  measurement  only.  This,  Congress- 
man John  Sherman  learned  to  his  surprise,  as  he  paid  his 
respects  to  the  President-elect,  on  the  evening  after  Mr. 
Lincoln's  arrival  in  Washington.  "  When  introduced  to 
him,"  says  Mr.  Sherman,  "  he  took  my  hands  in  both  of 
his,  drew  himself  up  to  his  full  height,  and  looking  at  me 
steadily,  said,  '  You  are  John  Sherman  !  Well,  I  am  taller 
than  you.  Let's  measure.'  Thereupon  we  stood  Uick  to 
back,  and  some  one  present  announced  that  he  was  two 
inches  taller  than  I.  This  was  correct,  for  he  was  six  feet 
three  and  one  half  inches  tall  when  he  stood  erect.  This 
singular  introduction  was  not  unusual  with  him,  but  if  it 
lacked  dignity,  it  was  an  expression  of  friendliness  and 
so  considered  by  him."65 

Dignity !  The  pomp  and  circumstance  of  the  White 
House  itself  did  not  abate  Mr.  Lincoln's  fondness  for 
measuring.  How  deeply  rooted  this  trait  was,  may  bo 
gathered  from  the  following  typical  scene,  described  by 
one  who  happened  to  be  present.  On  one  of  the  President's 
public  audience  days,  a  stalwart  caller,  evidently  from  the 
rural  West,  approached  Mr.  Lincoln  awkwardly  and  man- 
aged to  explain  that,  being  on  a  visit  to  the  Capital,  he 


3* 

desired  before  leaving  to  see  the  President,  and  to  have 
the  honor  of  shaking  hands  with  him.  Mr.  Lincoln,  as  he 
smilingly  complied,  surveyed  the  big  man  from  head  to 
foot  and  said,  in  his  playful  way :  — 

"  I  rather  think  you  have  a  little  the  advantage  of  me 
in  height.  You  are  a  taller  man  than  I  am." 

"  I  guess  not,  Mr.  President,"  replied  the  visitor ;  "  the 
advantage  cannot  be  on  my  side." 

"  Yes,  it  is,"  was  the  rejoinder.  "  I  have  a  pretty  good 
eye  for  distances,  and  I  think  I  can't  be  mistaken  in  the 
fact  of  the  advantage  being  slightly  with  you.  I  measure 
six  feet  three  and  a  half  inches  in  my  stockings,  and  you 
go,  I  think,  a  little  beyond  that." 

As  the  other  still  politely  demurred,  Mr.  Lincoln  said, 
"  It  is  very  easily  tested."  Rising  from  his  chair,  he  placed 
a  book  edgewise  against  the  wall,  just  higher  than  his  head. 
Then,  turning  to  his  visitor,  he  bade  him,  "  Come  under." 
This  the  granger  hesitated  to  do,  his  countenance  the  while 
wearing  a  bewildered  yet  half-smiling  expression  that,  we 
are  told,  was  comical  to  see. 

"  Come  under,  I  say,"  repeated  the  President  in  a  more 
peremptory  tone,  and  the  visitor  slowly  complied.  When 
Mr.  Lincoln,  in  his  turn,  stepped  under  the  book,  he  was 
found  to  have  fallen  a  trifle  short  of  the  other's  measure- 
ment. 

"  There,"  said  he,  "  it  is  as  I  told  you.  I  knew  I  could  n't 
be  mistaken.  I  rarely  fail  in  taking  a  man's  true  altitude 
by  the  eye." 

"  Yes,  but  Mr.  President,"  said  the  man,  to  the  merri- 
ment of  the  company,  "  you  have  slippers  on  and  I  boots, 
and  that  makes  a  difference." 

"  Not  enough  to  amount  to  anything  in  this  reckoning," 
was  the  reply.  "  You  ought  at  least  to  be  satisfied,  my 
honest  friend,  with  the  proof  given  that  you  actually  stand 
higher  to-day  than  your  President."  M 

Even  more  averse  to  Mr.  Lincoln's  yard-stick  than  this 
modest  citizen  was  the  senior  Senator  from  Massachusetts. 


3a        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

"  Sumner,"  said  the  President,  "  declined  to  stand  up  with 
me,  back  to  back,  to  see  which  was  the  taller  man,  and 
made  a  fine  speech  about  this  being  the  time  for  uniting 
our  fronts  against  the  enemy  and  not  our  backs.  But  I 
guess  he  was  afraid  to  measure,  though  he  is  a  good  piece 
of  a  man.  I  have  never  had  much  to  do  with  Bishops 
where  I  live ;  but,  do  you  know,  Sumner  is  my  idea  of  a 
Bishop."67 

A  palpable  hit,  this,  when  we  recall  the  imposing  pre- 
sence and  the  massive  frame  of  the  cultured  Bostonian,  who, 
after  towering  for  years  above  his  contemporaries,  was  evi- 
dently not  willing  to  surrender,  in  an  idle  moment,  the 
physical  preeminence  in  which  he,  too,  took  not  a  little 
pride.88  Perhaps  his  eye  had  become  as  practiced  "in 
taking  a  man's  true  altitude,"  as  the  President's.  If  so,  it 
gave  warning  that  when  the  loosely  jointed  figure  before 
him  unfolded  to  its  full  height,88  "Old  Abe  "  would,  in  one 
respect  at  least,  prove  to  be  Charles  Sumner's  superior. 

The  scholarly  statesman  from  the  East,  no  less  than 
the  man  of  the  people  from  the  West,  owed  something  of 
that  subtle,  indefinable  force  which  issued  in  mastery  over 
their  fellows,  to  mere  physique.  However  slight  this  debt 
may  have  been,  they  did  not  fail  to  recognize  it  —  each  in 
his  characteristic  way.  Sumuer,  whether  he  gave  to  the 
world  an  oration  with  carefully  studied  pose  and  gesture, 
or  privately  employed  his  powers  of  persuasion  in  further- 
ing one  of  the  lofty  aims  of  his  career,  was  ever  conscious 
of  the  advantage  that  lay  in  his  commanding  figure,  and 
he  improved  it  to  the  utmost.  Lincoln,  rarely,  if  ever,  self- 
conscious,  made  no  such  application  of  his  strength  and 
stature ;  but  the  exhibitions  of  them  that  he  scattered 
through  his  life  abundantly  manifest  his  half -serious,  half- 
joking  sense  of  their  importance.  This  appreciation  of  a 
superiority,  purely  physical,  by  leaders  so  unlike  in  tem- 
perament and  training,  is  sufficient  to  warrant  the  attention 
that  has  been  given  here  to  a  seemingly  unessential  matter. 
Moreover,  it  is  no  mere  coincidence  that  the  three  most 


A  SAMSON  OF  THE  BACKWOODS    33 

forceful  personalities  that  have  directed  the  fortunes  of  the 
American  people  from  the  President's  chair  were  embodied 
in  frames  of  uncommon  size  and  vigor.  Their  habits  of 
command,  confirmed  early  in  life  by  ability  to  enforce  their 
wishes,  armed  them  with  the  irresistible  powers  of  control 
by  means  of  which  they  triumphed  in  great  crises  of  our 
nation's  history.  The  heaviest  demands  of  this  nature 
were,  beyond  a  question,  laid  upon  Abraham  Lincoln,  and 
he,  consistently  enough,  was,  of  all  the  Presidents,  the 
tallest  and  sturdiest. 


CHAPTER  H 
LOVE,  WAR,  AND  POLITICS 

LINCOLN'S  quickly  acquired  ascendancy,  such  as  it  was, 
over  the  people  of  New  Salein,  received  formal  confir- 
mation almost  as  speedily.  In  less  than  ten  months 
from  that  lazy  summer  day  on  which,  as  he  himself  de- 
scribed it,  the  young  stranger  had  lodged  in  the  place  like 
a  piece  of  floating  driftwood,  he  was  singled  out  by  his 
neighbors  for  the  choicest  honor  then  within  their  gift  — 
a  military  command.  The  Black  Hawk  War,  narrowly 
averted  during  the  preceding  year,  had  broken  out  in  the 
spring  of  1832,  spreading  panic  along  the  Illinois  frontier. 
Rock  River  valley  in  the  northern  part  of  the  State,  once 
the  hunting-ground  of  the  united  Sac  and  Fox  Indians, 
was  overrun  by  a  band  of  their  warriors  under  the  famous 
old  leader  for  whom  history  has  named  the  struggle 
that  ensued.  He  had,  the  previous  summer,  in  accordance 
with  existing  treaties,  ceded  the  land  to  the  government, 
and  had  removed  with  his  people  beyond  the  Mississippi. 
But  Black  Hawk's  inveterate  hatred  of  the  Americans, 
engendered  by  wrongs  not  altogether  imaginary,  and  kept 
alive,  since  the  war  of  1812,  by  the  Englishmen  in  Canada, 
had  aroused  him  to  one  final  raid  for  the  recovery  of  his 
home.  Having  recrossed  the  river  at  the  head  of  his  so- 
called  British  band,  —  for  most  of  the  Sac  and  Fox  nations 
were  in  favor  of  peace,  —  he  held  the  lives  and  property 
of  the  settlers  in  his  hands.  At  this  juncture,  Governor 
Reynolds  called  for  volunteers  to  drive  the  Indians  back 
over  the  Mississippi.  Among  the  first  to  respond  was  a 
company  from  New  Salem  that  included  Abraham  Lin- 
coln and  many  of  his  Clary's  Grove  friends. 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         35 

On  their  way  to  the  rendezvous  at  Beardstown,  the 
volunteers  halted  to  elect  a  captain.  The  office  was 
sought  by  two  candidates,  Abraham  Lincoln  and  William 
Kirkpatrick.  The  latter,  as  the  owner  of  a  sawmill  and 
as  a  person  of  standing  in  the  community,  considered  the 
honor  to  be  his  due,  particularly  as  he  who  disputed  it 
with  him  was  a  newcomer  and  a  mere  hired  man.  Lincoln 
had,  in  fact,  upon  his  arrival  in  the  neighborhood,  done 
an  odd  job  or  two  in  Kirkpatrick's  mill.  To  the  proprie- 
tor's unfair  treatment  of  him,  on  that  occasion,  may  be 
ascribed  the  workman's  keen  desire  to  defeat  him  in  a 
public  contest.  Upon  hiring  Lincoln,  Kirkpatrick  had 
promised  to  buy  for  him  a  hook  with  which  to  move  some 
heavy  logs ;  but  finding  that  by  reason  of  the  young  man's 
strength  and  skill  the  work  was  done  as  well  with  a 
common  hand-spike,  he  had  agreed,  at  Lincoln's  sugges- 
tion, to  give  him  the  two  dollars  that  the  hook  would  have 
cost.  When  pay-day  arrived,  Kirkpatrick  had  refused  to 
keep  his  promise.  The  trick  rankled  in  Lincoln's  mem- 
ory. As  soon  as  he  heard  of  the  mill-owner's  ambition  for 
military  rank  he  said  to  his  friend  Green :  — 

"  Bill,  I  believe  I  can  now  make  Kirkpatrick  pay  that 
two  dollars  he  owes  me  on  the  cant-hook.  I  '11  run  against 
him  for  captain." 

The  election  that  followed  was  characteristic  in  its  sim- 
plicity. The  candidates  stood  apart ;  the  voters,  together. 
At  a  signal,  the  latter  stepped  over  to  the  man  whom  they 
severally  preferred.  Three  out  of  every  four  of  them  went 
promptly  to  Lincoln.1  Whereupon  the  minority,  who 
stood  with  his  competitor,  left  their  candidate  one  by  one 
to  join  the  successful  party.  This  continued  until  Kirk- 
patrick stood  almost  alone.  His  punishment  had  been 
severe.  "  Damn  him,"  muttered  Lincoln  to  his  friend, 
"  I  've  beat  him.  He  used  me  badly  in  our  settlement 
for  my  toil."  The  more  audible  impromptu  speech  in 
which  the  new  Captain  thanked  his  company  was  probably 
expressed  ip  language  less  unparliamentary.  It  has  not 


3  6        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

been  preserved,  but  a  minute  of  the  speaker's  gratifica- 
tion has.  Recalling  the  event,  in  that  frank  little  third- 
person  autobiography  of  1860,  Mr.  Lincoln  wrote :  — 

"  He  says  he  has  not  since  had  any  success  in  life  which 
gave  him  so  much  satisfaction." 

And  with  reason,  for  this  election  meant  far  more  to 
him  than  the  humbling  of  an  influential  man  who  had 
wronged  him.  It  was  the  first  formal  public  recognition 
of  his  ability  to  lead.2 

How  creditably  the  young  officer  conducted  himself 
may  be  determined  only  after  an  inspection  of  the  mate- 
rial at  his  command.  A  motley  company  it  was,  every  man 
of  it  equipped  after  his  own  fashion,  and  intent  upon 
maintaining,  in  behavior  as  well  as  in  appearance,  the 
frontiersman's  cherished  individuality.  Having  joined  his 
neighbors,  on  equal  terms,  for  an  expedition  against  the 
Indians,  he  became  restive  under  discipline  whenever,  in 
his  good  judgment,  it  did  not  bear  directly  upon  the 
affair  in  hand.  This  prejudice  against  subordination  he 
had,  it  is  true,  overcome  sufficiently  to  participate,  on  the 
democratic  plan  described,  in  the  choice  of  a  captain ; 
but  with  his  vote  probably  went  the  private  reservation  to 
obey  that  officer  or  not  as  occasion  might  suggest.  Thus 
far,  the  men  of  Lincoln's  company  differed  from  the  rest 
of  Governor  Reynolds's  hastily  gathered  army  in  no  im- 
portant particular.  Beyond  this,  however,  lay  a  marked 
variation  in  degree,  if  not  in  kind.  The  volunteers  from 
New  Salem  savored  strongly  of  Clary's  Grove.  Un- 
trained, disorderly,  even  mutinous,  they  distanced  the 
other  companies  in  their  violation  of  rules,  and  soon  won 
the  distinction  of  being  a  "hard  set  of  men."  Their 
Captain  once  recalled  that  his  first  order  to  one  of  them 
was  answered  by,  "  Go  to  the  devil,  sir !  "  The  officer 
hastened  to  the  manual  instead,  so  that  no  time  might  be 
lost  in  making  soldiers  out  of  his  unpromising  recruits. 

The  task  of  compelling  obedience  from  such  men, 
difficult  under  the  best  of  conditions,  must  have  taxed 


37 

to  their  utmost  the  faculties  of  a  captain  no  less  deficient 
than  they  in  military  training.  How  Lincoln  pieced  out 
his  ignorance  and  saved  the  official  dignity  from  disaster 
is  illustrated  by  the  droll  anecdotes  with  which  he  was  ac- 
customed, some  years  later,  in  the  post-office  of  the  House, 
to  amuse  his  fellow  Congressmen.  One  of  these  stories 
dealt  with  his  first  attempt  to  drill  the  awkward  squad.3 
They  were  marching  with  a  front  of  about  twenty  men 
across  a  field,  when  it  became  necessary  to  pass  through  a 
narrow  gateway.  "  I  could  not  for  the  life  of  me,"  said  he, 
"  remember  the  proper  word  of  command  for  getting  my 
company  endwise  so  that  it  could  get  through  the  gate. 
So,  as  we  came  near  the  gate,  I  shouted,  '  This  company 
is  dismissed  for  two  minutes,  when  it  will  fall  in  again 
on  the  other  side  of  the  gate! ' " 4  It  was  not  so  easy,  be 
it  said,  for  Lincoln  to  gloss  over  all  his  shortcomings.  He 
failed,  in  one  instance  at  least,  to  understand  that  he  who 
would  command  must  first  learn  to  obey.  Hence,  shortly 
after  his  company  had  joined  the  main  body  of  the  army, 
we  find  him  in  disgrace  for  disobedience  of  a  general 
order.  This  decree,  issued  while  the  horses  were  making 
a  precarious  crossing  over  the  Henderson  River,  prohib- 
ited, for  obvious  reasons,  the  discharge  of  firearms  within 
fifty  paces  of  the  camp  limits.  Deliberately  ignoring  the 
order,  our  Captain  fired  his  pistol  within  ten  steps  of  the 
camp.  He  was  promptly  deprived  of  his  sword,  and  was 
placed  under  arrest  for  the  day.5 

About  a  week  later,  Lincoln  was  again  subjected  to 
punishment,  but  this  time  for  the  misdeeds  of  his  men. 
They  had,  upon  their  arrival  near  the  seat  of  war,  been 
received  into  the  United  States  service.  The  military 
prestige  of  the  nation  appears,  however,  to  have  restrained 
their  unruly  spirits  no  more  than  had  that  of  the  state. 
When  the  army  was  about  to  march  in  search  of  the 
Indians,  one  bright  May  morning,  Captain  Lincoln  di- 
rected the  orderly  sergeant  to  parade  his  company.  They 
failed  to  respond  to  the  officer's  calls,  and  the  sounds  that 


3 8        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

issued  from  beneath  some  of  the  blankets  gave  intimation 
of  what  soon  proved  to  be  the  terrible  truth.  These 
valiant  men  had,  during  the  night,  made  a  sortie,  on  their 
own  account,  upon  an  enemy  that,  more  powerful  than 
the  Sacs  or  the  Foxes,  had  laid  them  low.  The  warriors 
from  New  Salem  were  dead  —  drunk.  Investigation  re- 
vealed that  they  had  broken  into  the  officers'  stores, 
and  had  stolen  enough  liquor  to  render  marching,  a  few 
hours  later,  an  unreasonable  proposition.  Indeed,  all  the 
efforts  of  their  mortified  commander,  who  of  course  had 
been  kept  in  ignorance  of  the  spree,  failed  to  maintain 
them  on  their  feet  long  enough  to  start  with  the  other 
troops.  Some  time  after  the  army  had  marched,  he  man- 
aged to  set  his  besotted  ranks  in  motion  ;  but  as  stragglers 
dropped  here  and  there  along  the  road,  to  finish  their 
interrupted  slumbers,  the  company  did  not  overtake  the 
main  body  before  nightfall.  Then  Captain  Lincoln  was 
again  placed  under  arrest,  with  orders  to  carry  for  two 
days  —  oh,  cutting  mockery !  —  a  wooden  sword.8  The 
punishment  was  in  keeping  with  the  opera  bouffe  element 
that  runs  through  the  incident.  Yet,  there  is  no  reason 
for  assuming  that  the  young  officer,  keen  of  humor  though 
he  was,  found  aught  in  the  affair,  at  the  time,  but  chagrin. 
This  failure  to  maintain  control  over  his  men,  together 
with  his  own  violation  of  discipline,  a  few  days  before, 
must  have  made  clear  to  him  that  he  had  now  to  face 
entirely  new  problems  in  leadership. 

New  problems  may  sometimes  be  solved  in  old  ways. 
So  must  have  thought  this  captain  of  volunteers,  for  he 
sought  to  establish  his  military  authority  not  by  apply- 
ing the  unfamiliar  regulations  in  the  articles  of  war,  but 
by  employing  the  means  that  had  already  stood  him  in 
such  good  stead.  Courage,  skill,  and  strength  had  secured 
to  him  at  home  a  certain  ascendancy  over  these  rough 
fellows.  Why  not,  he  may  have  asked  himself,  hold  that 
ascendancy  in  camp  by  further  exhibitions  of  these  qual- 
ities ?  Opportunities  were  plentiful  enough  in  the  sports 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         39 

with  which  the  soldiers  tried  to  relieve  the  hardships  of 
the  campaign,  and  in  which  Lincoln  appears,  as  was  his 
wont,  to  have  excelled  them  all.  This  was  especially  so 
in  wrestling.  With  a  handkerchief  knotted  around  his 
waist,  he  would  jump  into  the  ring,  on  notice  however 
short,  to  uphold  the  reputation  of  his  company.  The  vol- 
unteers from  New  Salem  believed  that  no  man  in  the 
army  could  throw  their  Captain,  a  faith  which  he  shared, 
and  in  which  he  took  not  a  little  pride.  Indeed,  long  after 
his  ambitions  had  undergone  a  change,  he  was  fond  of 
recalling  these  triumphs.  They  had  a  prominent  place 
among  the  reminiscences  with  which  he  entertained  his 
congressional  friends.  Telling  them  once  about  a  cham- 
pion of  the  southern  Illinois  companies  who  challenged 
him,  Mr.  Lincoln  said  :  — 

"  He  was  at  least  two  inches  taller  than  I  was,  and 
somewhat  heavier,  but  I  reckoned  that  I  was  the  most 
wiry,  and  soon  after  I  had  tackled  him  I  gave  him  a  hug, 
lifted  him  off  the  ground,  and  threw  him  flat  on  his  back. 
That  settled  his  hash." 7 

Lincoln  continued  to  settle  the  hashes  dished  up  for 
him  by  his  enthusiastic  followers,  until  a  certain  Dow 
Thompson,  not  otherwise  known  to  fame,  was  pitted 
against  him.  On  the  day  appointed,  the  respective  sup- 
porters of  the  men,  having  wagered  their  money  and  val- 
uables upon  the  result,  formed  a  ring  for  the  contest. 
Lincoln's  confidence  in  his  ability  to  throw  Thompson 
underwent  a  change  after  the  first  few  passes.  Turning 
to  his  friends,  he  said  :  — 

"  This  is  the  most  powerful  man  I  ever  had  hold  of. 
He  will  throw  me  and  you  will  lose  your  all,  unless  I  act 
on  the  defensive." 

The  New  Salem  champion  appeared,  in  fact,  to  be 
outclassed.  He  managed  to  keep  his  feet  for  some  time, 
but  he  was  at  last  fairly  thrown.  Two  falls  out  of  three 
were  to  decide  the  match,  so  the  wrestlers  tried  another 
bout.  The  second  differed  somewhat  from  the  first.  Lin 


40        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

coin  fell  heavily,  pulling  Thompson  to  the  ground  with 
him.  As  both  went  down,  this  looked  like  a  "  dog-fall," 
and  it  was  so  declared  by  Lincoln's  friends.  The  adher- 
ents of  Thompson,  on  the  other  hand,  as  warmly  claimed  it 
to  be  a  fair  fall.  A  general  fight  seemed  imminent,  but 
before  the  angry  partisans  could  come  to  blows,  Lincoln, 
who  had  regained  his  feet,  rushed  between  them,  and  said 
to  his  supporters :  — 

"  Boys,  give  up  your  bets ;  if  he  has  not  thrown  me 
fairly,  he  could." 

This  magnanimous  course  put  an  end  to  the  quarrel, 
while  it  left  Lincoln's  reputation  as  a  wrestler  not  seri- 
ously impaired.  For  his  men,  though  they  paid  their 
bets  in  obedience  to  his  commands,  refused  to  concede 
that  he  had  been  defeated,  or  that  any  athlete  in  the  army 
was  his  match.8 

The  pride  of  Lincoln's  troopers  in  their  Captain  went 
far  toward  reconciling  them  to  his  authority.  He  was, 
in  fact,  the  only  officer  whom  they  learned  to  obey.  More- 
over, "they  were  fighting  men,"  as  one  historian  says, 
"  and  but  for  his  personal  authority  would  have  kept  the 
camp  in  a  perpetual  uproar."  Even  Lincoln's  control  was, 
before  he  got  through  with  them,  put  to  a  severe  strain, — 
the  severest  that  can  come  to  an  officer,  be  he  recruit  or 
veteran,  —  open  mutiny.  This  is  how  it  happened.  After 
the  disgraceful  rout  known  as  "  Stillman's  defeat,"  Gov- 
ernor Reynolds  and  his  army  started  in  hot  pursuit  of 
the  Indians.  The  savages,  as  they  fled,  left  ghastly  traces 
of  their  presence,  here  and  there,  in  sacked  homes  and 
murdered  people ;  but,  applying  their  skill  in  woodcraft, 
they  confused  their  trail  so  well  that  their  pursuers 
sought  them,  for  some  time,  in  vain.  The  volunteers, 
unaccustomed  to  the  consequent  privations,  became  exas- 
perated against  the  enemy  and  unruly  toward  their  officers. 
Daring  one  of  these  fruitless  marches,  a  weary  and  hun- 
gry old  Indian  wandered  into  camp.  He  professed  to  be 
a  friend  of  the  whites,  and  showed  a  safe-conduct  signed 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         41 

by  General  Cass.  This  declared  him  to  have  done  good 
service  and  to  be  faithful  to  the  government.  Disregard- 
ing the  pass,  some  of  the  Sangamon  volunteers,  actuated 
by  their  recently  inflamed  hatred  of  the  red  man,  and 
recalling,  no  doubt,  the  frontiersman's  maxim,  that  the 
only  good  Indian  is  the  dead  Indian,  rushed  upon  the  re- 
fugee, determined  to  kill  him.  At  this  juncture,  Captain 
Lincoln,  stepping  between  them  and  their  victim,  knocked 
up  the  leveled  muskets. 

"  Men,"  said  he,  his  voice  ringing  above  their  shouts, 
"  this  must  not  be  done.  He  must  not  be  shot  and  killed 
by  us." 

For  a  moment  it  seemed  as  if  the  speaker,  as  well  as 
the  creature  that  crouched  behind  him,  was  in  danger. 
Then  the  courage  and  resolution  in  the  young  officer's 
attitude  gained  the  mastery.  Beneath  his  fixed  gaze  the 
mutinous  group  sullenly  fell  back  with  murmurs  of  dis- 
appointment and  vengeance. 

"  This  is  cowardly  on  your  part,  Lincoln  !  "  cried  one 
of  them. 

"  If  any  man  thinks  I  am  a  coward,  let  him  test  it," 
was  the  reply. 

"  You  are  larger  and  heavier  than  we  are,"  said  another. 

"  This  you  can  guard  against.  Choose  your  weapons," 
rejoined  Lincoln. 

To  this  the  mutineers  made  no  answer.  They  had  never 
before  seen  him  so  aroused.  There  was  nothing  left  for 
them  but  submission.  One  by  one  they  slunk  away,  and 
left  the  Indian  in  peace.  How  imminent  had  been  his 
danger  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  one  of  his  race, 
aged  and  blind,  who  threw  himself  upon  the  mercy  of 
another  company,  a  few  weeks  later,  was  murdered  by  the 
enraged  soldiers.  To  oppose  such  men,  be  it  said,  in  the 
height  of  their  frenzy,  was  beyond  the  ability  of  most 
militia  officers.  Captain  Lincoln,  however,  knew  the  crowd 
with  which  he  had  to  deal.  It  was  only  by  sinking  the 
officer  and  asserting  the  man  that  he  could  have  hoped  for 


42        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

a  real  conquest.  He  might,  it  is  true,  have  enforced  obedi- 
ence by  recourse  to  military  discipline  ;  but  the  influence 
over  this  rough  citizen-soldiery,  which  he  so  highly  prized, 
would  probably  have  been  lost  to  him  forever.  As  it  was, 
neither  his  courage  nor  his  authority  was  again  questioned ; 
for,  as  he  himself  afterwards  declared,  he  had,  at  the  risk 
of  his  life,  finally  established  both.9 

The  force  of  character  manifested  in  these  incidents 
is  sufficient  to  account  for  the  inexperienced  militia  cap- 
tain's sway  over  men  whom  no  one  else  could  handle  ;  yet 
the  respect  and  even  the  affection  with  which,  before  the 
close  of  the  campaign,  his  conduct  inspired  them,  con- 
tributed somewhat,  no  doubt,  toward  this  result.  Tactfully 
taking  the  middle  ground  between  that  of  the  commander 
and  the  comrade,  he  did  not  let  "the  boys"  forget  that  he 
was  their  superior,  although  none  of  them  entered  more 
keenly  than  he  into  their  pleasures  or  their  troubles. 
Here  was  a  captain  of  volunteers,  indeed  !  When  the 
duties  of  the  day  had  been  disposed  of,  he  was  always 
ready  to  join  the  men  in  their  pastimes  ;  when  fatigues  or 
hunger  discouraged  them,  —  for  the  marching  was  hard 
and  the  commissary  too  often  missing,  —  he  gathered  them 
at  night  about  the  camp-fire,  to  turn  their  faultfinding  into 
laughter  over  his  inexhaustible  flow  of  jests  and  stories ; 
finally,  when  injustice  threatened  their  welfare,  he  became 
so  watchful  of  their  comfort,  so  tenacious  of  their  rights, 
that,  in  the  language  of  one  of  the  men,  he  "attached 
officers  and  rank  to  him,  as  with  hooks  of  steel."  The 
volunteers,  be  it  known,  had  for  some  time  suffered  under 
the  discriminations  in  favor  of  the  regular  troops,  tint 
inevitably  arise  from  the  employment  of  the  two  brandies 
in  the  same  service.  The  militia  had,  indeed,  been  accepted 
by  the  government;  but  it  was  a  State  body,  under  State 
control,  none  the  less,  and  it  accordingly  did  not  escape 
the  customary  prejudice.  Abuses  continued,  until  Captain 
Lincoln,  one  day,  received  an  order  that  appeared  to  be 
improper.  He  obeyed  it,  but,  improving  the  opportunity, 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         43 

went  directly  to  the  regular  officer,  who  had  issued  it,  and 
protested  against  the  injustice  to  which  his  men  had  been 
subjected.  Lincoln  is  said  to  have  stated  the  case  in  good, 
set  terms,  concluding  with  :  — 

"  Sir,  you  forget  that  we  are  not  under  the  rules  and 
regulations  of  the  War  Department  at  Washington ;  are 
only  volunteers  under  the  orders  and  regulations  of 
Illinois.  Keep  in  your  own  sphere  and  there  will  be  no 
difficulty,  but  resistance  will  hereafter  be  made  to  your 
unjust  orders.  And,  further,  my  men  must  be  equal  in  all 
particulars  —  in  rations,  arms,  camps,  and  so  forth  —  to 
the  regular  army." 

This  demand  was  effectual.  The  wisdom,  if  not  the  jus- 
tice, of  acceding  to  it  had  been  made  clear  to  the  regu- 
lar officers ;  and  they  discontinued,  from  that  time,  their 
unfair  treatment  of  the  volunteers.  As  for  the  militiamen 
themselves,  they,  naturally  enough,  regarded  him  who  had 
thus  championed  their  cause,  with  devotion.10 

The  victory  over  the  epaulets  at  headquarters  was  not 
less  satisfactory  than  had  been  our  Captain's  little  private 
campaign  for  the  mastery  of  his  own  men.  Their  surrender 
to  him,  at  discretion,  was  —  as  we  now  view  it  —  of  far 
deeper  significance  than  the  subsequent  capture  of  Black 
Hawk  and  all  his  savages.  The  so-called  war  would,  in 
fact,  like  the  other  struggles  of  its  class,  be  well-nigh 
forgotten  to-day,  if  it  were  not  for  the  few  participants 
who  became  eminent.11  And  certainly,  to  none  of  these 
was  the  brief  experience  so  momentous  as  to  the  raw 
youth  whose  task  of  leading  seventy  recruits  was  destined 
to  be  followed,  within  a  few  decades,  by  the  supreme  com- 
mand, at  one  time,  of  over  a  million  soldiers. 

Lincoln's  apprenticeship  to  discipline  had,  it  should  be 
added,  in  those  early  days,  a  two-fold  character.  When 
the  volunteers,  after  five  weeks  of  service,  demanded  their 
discharge,  he  was  mustered  out  with  his  company.12  As 
the  new  levies  had  then  not  yet  arrived  at  the  seat  of  war, 
Governor  Reynolds  appealed  to  the  patriotism  of  the  dis- 


44        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

banded  troops  for  a  regiment  of  volunteers  that  would,  ii> 
the  interim,  protect  the  frontier.  Among  those  who  reen- 
listed  was  the  ex-captain  from  the  Sangamon.  He  served 
then,  and  during  a  still  later  enlistment,  as  a  private  in 
an  Independent  Spy  Company  that  was  called  upon  to 
supply  couriers,  scouts,  and  skirmishers.  Of  his  conduct 
in  the  difficult,  and  presumably  dangerous,  duties  that 
were  assigned  to  him,  no  record  has  been  preserved,  save  in 
the  few  random  recollections  of  his  fellow  soldiers.  One 
of  them  recalls  that  whenever,  on  the  march,  scouts  were 
to  be  sent  out  to  examine  a  covert,  in  which  an  ambush 
might  be  concealed,  Lincoln  was  the  first  man  selected. 
Moreover,  many  of  those  who  rode  forward  with  him  are 
said  to  have  habitually  found  an  excuse,  as  they  neared 
the  place,  for  dismounting  to  adjust  their  girths  or  their 
saddles,  but  "Lincoln's  saddle,"  it  is  dryly  added,  "was 
always  in  perfect  order." 13  He  had  probably  learned,  bj 
this  unusual  inversion  of  military  rank,  how  to  receive 
orders  as  well  as  he  had  mastered  the  art  of  giving  them. 
At  all  events,  he  was  a  faithful  soldier  to  the  end.  For, 
when  he  was  finally  mustered  out  of  service,  a  few  weeks 
before  the  close  of  the  war,  it  was  not,  as  had  been  the 
case  with  so  many  of  the  volunteers,  at  his  own  wish,  but 
in  the  general  disbandment  necessitated  by  the  lack  of 
provisions.  Thus  ingloriously  terminated  Abraham  Lin- 
coln's less  than  three  months  of  soldiering,  during  whioh, 
as  it  happened,  he  caught  sight  of  no  enemy  and  took 
part  in  no  battle.  If  this  vexed  the  volunteer,  he  may 
have  reflected,  as  he  made  his  way  back  to  New  Salem, 
that  it  was,  at  least,  as  creditable  to  his  courage  to  have 
saved  an  Indian  as  to  have  killed  one.  He  had,  moreover, 
engaged  in  sundry  struggles  with  those  who  ranked  above 
and  those  who  ranked  below  him ;  he  had  tasted  the 
sweets  of  office,  and  had  felt  its  responsibilities;  he  had, 
i:i  short,  learned  many  new  lessons  in  the  rudiments  of 
leadership.  The  campaign,  it  is  true,  as  he  himself  once 
facetiously  said,  does  not  afford  material  for  writing  him 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         45 

"  into  a  military  hero  "  ;  yet  the  part  that  he  had  played 
in  it  gave  indications,  at  least,  of  the  stuff  out  of  which 
heroes,  military  and  otherwise,  are  sometimes  developed. 

The  horizon  of  Lincoln's  ambition  had,  even  before 
the  Black  Hawk  War,  distinctly  widened.  To  extend 
throughout  the  county  the  influence  that  he  had  attained 
over  the  village  became,  within  a  few  months  after  he  had 
taken  his  place  behind  Offutt's  counter,  one  of  his  aspi- 
rations. In  order  to  gratify  it  by  the  readiest  means, 
he  went,  as  the  phrase  goes,  into  politics.  The  road  to  pub- 
lic preferment  did  not  then,  as  now,  in  Illinois,  follow 
the  devious  windings  of  caucuses  and  conventions.14  A 
straight  course  lay  before  candidates  for  elective  offices, 
and  as  many  as  pleased  entered  the  race.  Each  compet- 
itor, having  merely  announced  that  he  intended  to  run, 
started  off  after  his  own  fashion  and  made  his  way  as  best 
he  could  towards  the  winning  post.  These  heats  were  not 
without  rude  jostlings  —  even  collisions,  for  the  runners 
were  many  and  the  posts  few.  But  what  would  you  have, 
when 

"  The  grave,  the  gay,  the  fopling,  and  the  dunce, 
Start  up  (God  bless  us  !)  statesmen  all  at  once." 

This  array  of  all  the  talents,  moreover,  usually  scrambled 
for  the  same  places  —  seats  in  the  legislature.  Sublimely 
ignorant  of  existing  laws  many  of  them  were,  to  be  sure, 
but  this  ignorance,  as  it  left  the  prospective  law-maker 
somewhat  untrammeled  in  legislating  according  to  the 
wants  of  his  constituency,  was  not  invariably  regarded  as 
a  disability.  Hence,  the  announcement  one  morning  that 
the  young  clerk  at  the  grocery  store  had  become  a  candi- 
date for  the  legislature  was  not  so  absurd,  in  the  spring 
of  1832,  as  it  might  be  to-day.  Lincoln  had,  in  fact,  been 
"encouraged  by  his  great  popularity  among  his  immedi- 
ate neighbors"  —  so  read  the  autobiographical  notes  —  to 
offer  himself  as  a  representative  of  the  people  in  the  Gen- 
eral Assembly. 

The  election  was   to  take   place  late  in   the  summer, 


46         LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

but  he  had  issued  at  once,  in  accordance  with  custom, 
an  "  address  "  to  the  voters  of  Sangamon  County.  This 
was  his  first  formal  application  to  the  public  for  political 
power.  As  such,  the  document,  particularly  its  conclud- 
ing paragraph,  is  of  interest  here. 

"  Every  man,"  he  wrote,  "  is  said  to  have  his  peculiar 
ambition.  Whether  it  be  true  or  not,  I  can  say,  for  one, 
that  I  have  no  other  so  great  as  that  of  being  truly  es- 
teemed of  my  fellow  men,  by  rendering  myself  worthy 
of  their  esteem.  How  far  I  shall  succeed  in  gratifying 
this  ambition  is  yet  to  be  developed.  I  am  young,  and 
unknown  to  many  of  you.  I  was  born,  and  have  ever 
remained,  in  the  most  humble  walks  of  life.  I  have  no 
wealthy  or  popular  relations  or  friends  to  recommend  me. 
My  case  is  thrown  exclusively  upon  the  independent  voters 
of  the  county ;  and,  if  elected,  they  will  have  conferred  a 
favor  upon  me,  for  which  I  shall  be  unremitting  in  my 
labors  to  compensate.  But,  if  the  good  people,  in  their 
wisdom,  shall  see  fit  to  keep  me  in  the  background,  I 
have  been  too  familiar  with  disappointments  to  be  very 
much  chagrined." 1S 

How  sincere  was  the  writer's  desire  to  be  "  truly  es- 
teemed "  had  been  manifested,  a  few  weeks  later,  at  the 
outbreak  of  the  war.  Abandoning  his  canvass,  before  it 
was  well  begun,  he  had  in  response  to  the  first  call,  as  we 
have  seen,  marched  off,  with  some  of  his  neighbors,  to  the 
defence  of  the  State. 

The  volunteer,  upon  his  discharge,  returned  to  New 
Salem  with  the  politician's  dearest  attribute — a  record, 
such  as  it  was,  of  military  service.  That  our  ex-captain 
did  not,  then  or  thereafter,  so  far  as  is  known,  parade  his 
sword  for  votes  should  be  mentioned  to  his  credit.  This 
forbearance  was  especially  noteworthy  in  the  case  of 
Lincoln's  first  canvass,  which  had  been  so  interrupted  by 
that  very  service  as  to  leave  the  candidate,  after  his  return 
from  the  front,  but  ten  days  for  his  contest.  It  was  con- 
ducted, nevertheless,  manfully  on  its  merits.  Seizing  the 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         47 

few  opportunities  still  open  to  him,  he  made  little  speeches 
in  which,  besides  approving  of  certain  popular  local  ideas, 
he  declared  himself  to  be  "a  Clay  man,"  and  in  favor 
of  Henry  Clay's  so-called  "American  system."  Such 
national  politics  doomed  his  already  heavily  handicapped 
canvass ;  for  the  county,  as  well  as  the  state  and  the  coun- 
try, was  at  that  time  overwhelmingly  devoted  to  the  policy 
of  President  Jackson.  The  Democratic  leader's  partisans, 
moreover,  growing  intolerant  in  their  might,  had  adopted 
his  prescriptive  methods  toward  political  enemies,  who 
were  to  be  "  whipped  out  of  office  like  dogs  out  of  a  meat 
house." 16  Yet  this  penniless  and  obscure  young  man, 
eager  for  office  as  he  was,  had  the  courage  and  self-reli- 
ance —  let  us  say  nothing  of  conscience  —  to  take  his  first 
plunge  into  politics  in  accordance  with  his  convictions  and 
against  the  tide  on  which  the  victorious  spoilsmen  were 
carrying  all  before  them.  He  went  down,  on  election  day, 
with  the  other  Clay  men,  suffering  his  first  and  only  de- 
feat by  a  direct  vote  of  the  people.  A  glance,  however, 
at  the  poll-book,  reveals  a  crumb  of  comfort  larger  than 
usually  falls  to  the  lot  of  unsuccessful  candidates.  Of  the 
thirteen  men  who  ran  for  the  legislature,  four  were  elected, 
and  Lincoln,  running  158  votes  behind  his  lowest  suc- 
cessful competitor,  stood  eighth  on  the  list.  Somewhat 
different  was  the  order  in  Lincoln's  home,  the  precinct 
of  New  Salem.  There,  of  the  290  voters  who  balloted  for 
representatives,  277  voted  for  him  and  but  13  against 
him.17  This  almost  unanimous  support  of  his  neighbors 
has  been  explained  by  Judge  Stephen  T.  Logan,  one  of 
the  rising  young  men  of  that  day. 

"  The  Democrats  of  New  Salem,"  said  he,  "  worked 
for  Lincoln  out  of  their  personal  regard  for  him.  That 
was  the  general  understanding  of  the  matter  here  at  the 
time.  In  this  he  made  no  concession  of  principle  what- 
ever. He  was  as  stiff  as  a  man  could  be  in  his  Whig 
doctrines.  They  did  this  for  him  simply  because  he  was 
popular  —  because  he  was  Lincoln." 


48        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

The  strength  of  this  hold  upon  the  people  may  be 
appreciated  to  its  fullest  extent  only  when  we  remember 
that  in  the  national  election,  a  few  weeks  later,  these  same 
voters  gave  General  Jackson  a  majority  of  115  over  Mr. 
Clay.  Under  such  conditions,  Lincoln's  defeat  was  not 
without  honor.  Indeed,  so  extraordinary  a  local  triumph 
at  once  established  his  standing  among  the  Warwicks 
of  the  county,  as  a  man  to  be  reckoned  with  thencefor- 
ward. 

During  the  two  years  following,  Lincoln  strove  to  pre- 
pare himself  for  the  political  career  opened  to  him  by 
his  brilliant,  if  unsuccessful,  start.  The  canvass  had 
made  clear  to  the  candidate  that  he  was  at  a  disadvantage 
in  two  particulars,  at  least.  The  people  of  the  county  at 
large  did  not  know  him  well  enough,  and  —  what  may 
have  been  less  evident  to  others,  though  it  was  even  more 
deeply  impressed  upon  him  —  he  did  not  know  enough  to 
cope,  on  an  equal  footing,  with  some  of  the  leaders  whom 
he  had  encountered.  The  first  of  these  deficiencies  was 
largely  overcome,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  through  the 
kindness  of  a  Democratic  officer,  the  Surveyor  of  Sanga- 
mon  County.  This  follower  of  Jackson,  John  Calhoun  by 
name,  so  far  forgot  his  "whole-hog"  obligations  as  to 
admire  the  new  "  Clay  man."  He  even  went  farther  in 
his  treason.  Having  persuaded  Lincoln  to  study  the  rudi- 
ments of  surveying,18  he  appointed  him  his  deputy,  and 
kept  him  so  busy  —  for  speculation  in  land  was  at  its 
height  —  that  the  young  man  had  ample  opportunity  not 
only  to  make  many  new  acquaintances,  but  to  win  their 
confidence  as  well.  The  second  deficiency  was  not  so 
easily  disposed  of,  though  Lincoln's  efforts  to  that  end 
were  untiring.  Whether,  as  happened  during  this  period, 
he  picked  up  a  living  by  doing  odd  jobs,  keeping  store, 
carrying  letters,  or  laying  out  town  lots,  he  invariably 
found  time  for  the  study  of  such  newspapers,  law  books, 
and  odd  volumes  as  came  within  his  reach.19  Conse- 
quently when,  during  the  summer  of  1834,  he  again 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         49 

presented  himself  as  a  candidate  for  the  legislature,  he 
made,  in  this  respect  also,  a  better  showing.  Still,  the 
homely,  ill-clad  young  fellow  must,  in  appearance  at  least, 
have  fallen  short  of  even  Sangamon  standards,  simple  as 
they  were.  "  He  wore,"  said  a  friend  who  had  accompa- 
nied him  in  the  preceding  canvass,  "  a  mixed  jeans  coat, 
clawhammer  style,  short  in  the  sleeves,  and  bobtail  —  in 
fact  it  was  so  short  in  the  tail  he  could  not  sit  on  it ; 
flax  and  tow-linen  pantaloons,  and  a  straw  hat.  I  think 
he  wore  a  vest,  but  do  not  remember  how  it  looked.  He 
wore  pot-metal  boots."20  This  wardrobe  had  evidently 
not  been  greatly  improved  when  Lincoln  made  his  second 
appeal  for  the  suffrages  of  the  people,  inasmuch  as  a  cer- 
tain doctor,  looking  him  over  contemptuously  while  he 
was  on  one  of  his  electioneering  tours,  asked  :  — 

"  Can't  the  party  raise  any  better  material  than  that?  " 

"Go  to-morrow  and  hear  all  before  you  pronounce 
judgment,"  said  a  common  friend,  who  after  the  meeting 
on  the  following  day  inquired:  — 

"  Doctor,  what  say  you  now  ?  " 

"  Why,  sir,"  was  the  answer,  "  he  is  a  perfect  take-in.  He 
knew  more  than  all  of  the  other  candidates  put  together." 21 

On  election  day  Lincoln  was  found  to  have  been  chosen 
by  a  flattering  plurality.  He  stood  second  on  the  list  of 
four  Assemblymen,  and  but  fourteen  votes  below  the  first 
man.22  This  success  was  repeated  in  1836,  when  he  led 
the  poll ;  in  1838,  after  he  had  become  a  lawyer,  with  his 
home  at  Springfield;  and  in  1840,  when  he  made  what, 
by  his  own  choice,  proved  to  be  his  last  run  for  the  office. 
The  five  canvasses  themselves  did  not  differ  essentially 
from  those  conducted  at  the  time  by  other  young  poli- 
ticians of  the  neighborhood.  In  one  respect,  however, 
Lincoln  appears  to  have  made  his  contests  distinctive. 
They  afforded  occasions,  which  he  did  not  neglect,  for  the 
exercise  of  his  aggressive  faculties.  Indeed,  careful  scru- 
tiny of  the  few  incidents  that  have  here  and  there  been 
chronicled  reveals  how  the  vein  of  mastery,  which  we 


5o        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

have  traced  to  this  point,  continued  unbroken  through 
the  entire  decade. 

Lincoln's  first  canvass  —  in  fact,  his  first  appearance 
on  the  stump  —  was  attended  by  a  little  scene  that  appro- 
priately introduced  the  subduer  of  Clary's  Grove  to  a 
community  fully  as  capable  of  appreciating  grit  and 
muscle.  A  crowd  of  voters  that  had  collected  at  Papps- 
ville,  getting  full  of  whiskey  and  enthusiasm,  began  a 
general  fight.  Among  those  who  were  roughly  handled 
was  a  follower  of  the  New  Salem  candidate.  Jumping 
from  the  platform,  Lincoln  rushed  through  the  melee, 
seized  his  friend's  assailant  as  if  to  make  him  "walk 
Spanish,"  tossed  him  off  ten  feet  or  so,  resumed  his  place 
on  the  stand,  and  calmly  began  his  little  speech.  This 
prelude,  it  is  safe  to  say,  did  not  lessen  the  warmth  of  his 
welcome  from  an  audience  akin  to  "  the  bare-footed  boys," 
"  the  huge-pawed  boys,"  or  "  the  butcher-knife  boys,"  who, 
in  the  elections  of  those  days,  so  often  held  the  balance 
of  power.23 

During  the  canvass  of  four  years  later,  when  Lincoln 
spoke  at  Mechanicsburg,  he  "jumped  in  and  saw  fair 
play  "  —  so  a  bystander  relates  —  for  another  friend  who 
was  getting  the  worst  of  it  in  a  similar  fight.24  By  that 
time,  however,  he  had  learned  to  use  his  tongue  and  his 
pen  no  less  effectually  than  his  hands  in  repelling  an 
attack.  Suiting  the  weapon  to  the  occasion,  he  mani- 
fested, in  those  primitive  electioneering  encounters  for  the 
Assembly,  something  of  the  power  and  adroitness  that 
in  mature  years  distinguished  his  more  ambitious  efforts. 
None  of  the  candidate's  later  triumphs  excelled,  in  this 
respect,  his  victory,  during  the  contest,  over  George  For- 
quer,  a  politician  of  prominence  and  uncommon  ability. 
A  lawyer  by  profession,  his  words,  as  a  speaker  and  as  a 
writer,  were  weighted  with  the  prestige  which  naturally 
attaches  to  one  who  had  been  member  of  the  Assembly, 
Secretary  of  State,  Attorney-General,  and  State  Senator. 
He  had  recently  deserted  the  Whig  Party  to  join  the 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         51 

Jackson  Democrats,  a  defection  which  the  administration 
had  rewarded  with  the  lucrative  place  of  Register  of  the 
Land  Office  at  Springfield.  This  worthy  might  have  sat 
for  Hosea  Biglow's  portrait  of  Gineral  C. :  — 

"  a  dreffle  smart  man  : 

He  's  ben  on  all  sides  thet  give  places  or  pelf ; 
But  consistency  still  wuz  a  part  of  his  plan,  — 

He  's  ben  true  to  one  party,  —  an'  thet  is  himself." 

Forquer's  pretentious  new  house,  from  which  projected 
a  lightning-rod, — the  only  one  in  the  county,  —  had  been 
pointed  out  to  Lincoln  as  he  rode  into  town,  one  evening, 
with  a  few  of  his  friends.  They  were  unable  to  answer 
the  young  man's  eager  questions  about  the  "  new-fangled  " 
rod.  It  was  there  to  keep  off  the  lightning.  More  than 
that  none  of  them  could  say.25  On  the  following  day,  in 
the  debate  which  took  place  at  the  court-house,  between 
the  candidates  for  office,  Lincoln  made  a  good  impression. 
In  fact,  his  success  was  so  marked  that,  as  the  audience 
was  dispersing,  the  Democrats  deemed  it  necessary  to  put 
forward  one  of  their  strong  men  to  reply.  This  task  was 
committed  to  Forquer,  who,  as  he  was  not  a  candidate,  had 
taken  no  part  in  the  discussion.  He  responded  to  the  call, 
nevertheless,  with  the  vigor  and  skill  of  a  practiced  de- 
bater. Not  content  with  what  could  be  said  in  answer  to 
Lincoln's  arguments,  the  speaker  sought  to  overwhelm 
the  young  man  beneath  a  flood  of  personal  abuse  and  ridi- 
cule. The  onslaught  was  so  severe  that  the  candidate's 
friends  trembled  for  their  favorite.  What  could  he  say  in 
rejoinder  ?  Lincoln,  evidently  laboring  under  great  excite- 
ment, stood  a  few  paces  distant,  intently  eyeing  the  speaker. 
At  the  conclusion  of  the  attack,  he  remounted  the  stand 
to  reply. 

"I  have  heard  him  often  since,"  writes  his  friend 
Joshua  F.  Speed,  who  was  present,  "in  the  courts  and 
before  the  people,  but  never  saw  him  appear  and  acquit 
himself  so  well  as  upon  that  occasion.  His  reply  to  For- 
quer  was  characterized  by  great  dignity  and  force." 


52         LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

This  praise  was  merited,  if  we  may  judge  from  the  con- 
clusion, which  alone  has  been  preserved. 

"Mr.  Forquer,"  said  Lincoln,  "commenced  his  speech 
by  announcing  that  the  young  man  would  have  to  be  taken 
down.  It  is  for  you,  fellow  citizens,  not  for  me  to  say 
whether  I  am  up  or  down.  The  gentleman  has  seen  fit  to 
allude  to  my  being  a  young  man  ;  but  he  forgets  that  I 
am  older  in  years  than  in  the  tricks  and  trades  of  politi- 
cians. I  desire  to  live,  and  I  desire  place  and  distinction  ; 
but  I  would  rather  die  now  than,  like  the  gentleman,  live 
to  see  the  day  that  I  would  change  my  politics  for  an 
office  worth  three  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  then  feel 
compelled  to  erect  a  lightning-rod  to  protect  a  guilty  con- 
science from  an  offended  God."  2e 

Our  Register  and  his  rod  had  indeed  drawn  the  light- 
ning. The  hit  was  a  palpable  one.  It  left  the  young 
candidate  master  of  the  field,  from  which  his  antagonist 
retired  with  a  hurt  that  never  entirely  healed.  When 
Forquer  thereafter  spoke  in  public  meetings,  his  oppo- 
nents usually  found  occasion  to  remind  his  audiences  that 
he  was  the  turncoat  whom  Abe  Lincoln  had  accused  of 
erecting  a  lightning-rod  "  to  protect  a  guilty  conscience 
from  an  offended  God."  27 

The  controversy  with  Forquer  was  typical  of  a  can- 
vass noted  for  its  bitterness.  Personal  conflicts,  not  only 
between  excited  partisans,  but  even  between  the  candidates 
themselves,  disgraced  the  contest.  In  such  a  struggle, 
Lincoln,  of  course,  could  not  hope  to  escape  slander  any 
more  than  he  had  avoided  abuse.  Vague  charges  against 
him  and  one  of  his  colleagues  were  circulated  by  Colonel 
Robert  Allen,  a  Democratic  politician,  who,  for  lack  of 
argument,  resorted  to  this  shift  for  prejudicing  the  Whig 
cause.  Lincoln's  method  of  meeting  the  attack  was  in 
striking  contrast  with  the  violence  to  which  similar  acts, 
in  the  rough-and-tumble  canvass  of  that  year,  gave  rise. 
He  sent  Allen  this  letter,  which  is  worthy  of  a  place  here, 
in  full:  — 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND  POLITICS         53 

NEW  SALEM,  June  21, 1836. 

DEAR  COLONEL,  —  I  am  told  that  during  my  absence 
last  week  you  passed  through  the  place  and  stated  publicly 
that  you  were  in  possession  of  a  fact  or  facts  which,  if 
known  to  the  public,  would  entirely  destroy  the  prospects 
of  N.  W.  Edwards  and  myself  at  the  ensuing  election ; 
but  that  through  favor  to  us  you  would  forbear  to  divulge 
them.  No  one  has  needed  favors  more  than  I,  and,  gen- 
erally, few  have  been  less  unwilling  to  accept  them ;  but 
in  this  case  favor  to  me  would  be  injustice  to  the  public, 
and  therefore  I  must  beg  your  pardon  for  declining  it. 
That  I  once  had  the  confidence  of  the  people  of  Sangamon 
County  is  sufficiently  evident ;  and  if  I  have  done  any- 
thing, either  by  design  or  misadventure,  which  if  known 
would  subject  me  to  a  forfeiture  of  that  confidence,  he 
that  knows  of  that  thing  and  conceals  it  is  a  traitor  to  his 
country's  interest. 

I  find  myself  wholly  unable  to  form  any  conjecture 
of  what  fact  or  facts,  real  or  supposed,  you  spoke ;  but 
my  opinion  of  your  veracity  will  not  permit  me  for  a 
moment  to  doubt  that  you  at  least  believed  what  you  said. 
I  am  flattered  with  the  personal  regard  you  manifested 
for  me  ;  but  I  do  hope  that,  on  mature  reflection,  you  will 
view  the  public  interest  as  a  paramount  consideration,  and 
therefore  determine  to  let  the  worst  come. 

I  assure  you  that  the  candid  statement  of  facts  on  your 
part,  however  low  it  may  sink  me,  shall  never  break  the 
ties  of  personal  friendship  between  us. 

I  wish  an  answer  to  this,  and  you  are  at  liberty  to  pub- 
lish both  if  you  choose. 

Very  respectfully, 

A.  LINCOLN. 

A  remarkable  production  this,  from  a  half -fledged  back- 
woods politician,  in  the  heat  of  an  election  contest !  The 
refined  irony  of  Lincoln's  thrust  —  for  a  notorious  per- 
verter  of  facts  was  the  Colonel  —  left  this  old  campaigner 


54        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

as  helplessly  impaled  upon  its  point  as  was  the  other 
veteran  upon  the  barb  of  his  own  lightning-rod.  Allen  — 
need  we  say  ?  —  did  not  avail  himself  of  the  permission  to 
publish  the  letter  or  an  answer  thereto.  He  was  silenced. 
His  son,  finding  the  letter,  long  after  the  incident  had  been 
forgotten,  gave  to  the  public  this  further  evidence  of  how 
"  the  young  man,"  who  was  "  to  be  taken  down,"  exchanged 
roles,  on  occasion,  with  the  gentlemen  in  charge  of  the 
performance.28 

The  canvass  of  1836,  stirring  as  it  was,  did  not  put  the 
candidates  so  much  on  their  mettle  as  did  that  of  1840  — 
the  annus  mirabilis  of  American  politics.  The  enthu- 
siasm of  "  the  hard-cider  campaign,"  with  its  acres  of 
mass-meetings,  its  processions,  frolics,  songs,  free  drinks, 
log-cabins,  and  coon-skins,  pervaded,  as  elsewhere,  the  local 
elections  in  Illinois.  State,  questions  were  lost  sight  of  in 
national  issues,  such  as  they  were,  and  Lincoln,  besides 
his  candidature  for  the  Assembly,  had  a  place  on  the  Whig 
electoral  ticket.  Entering  into  the  contest  with  his  accus- 
tomed zeal,  he  was  much  in  evidence  throughout  Illinois 
that  year ;  yet  what  he  said  in  debate  and  on  the  stump 
is,  as  was  the  case  in  previous  struggles,  largely  a  matter 
of  conjecture.29  On  the  other  hand,  some  of  the  things 
that  he  did  impressed  themselves,  firmly  enough,  in  the 
people's  memory. 

The  voters  of  1840  flocked  into  political  meetings  not 
to  learn  and  to  reflect,  but  to  shout,  to  scuffle,  to  laugh, 
and  to  sing.  How  cleverly  Lincoln  adapted  himself  to  such 
an  audience  and,  at  the  same  time,  crushed  an  opponent, 
with  a  turn  of  the  wrist,  as  one  might  say,  has  been  re- 
lated by  some  of  his  associates.  He  was  frequently  opposed 
on  the  stump  —  so  runs  the  story  —  by  Colonel  Dick  Tay- 
lor, a  demagogue  with  a  weakness  for  sarcasm  and  fine 
clothes.  Severely  Democratic  in  theory,  however,  the  Colo- 
nel took  care  to  keep  as  much  of  his  finery  as  possible  out 
of  sight,  while  he  had  his  flings  at  the  aristocratic  preten- 
sions of  the  Whigs,  or  warned  "  the  hard-handed  yeomanry  " 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         55 

against  "  rag-barons  "  and  "  manufacturing-lords."  Such 
taunts  made  up  the  stock  of  his  inflated  oratory,  as  usual, 
one  day,  when  Lincoln,  "to  take  the  wind  out  of  his  sails," 
as  he  expressed  it,  slipped  to  the  speaker's  side  and  catch- 
ing his  vest  by  the  lower  edge,  gave  it  a  sharp  pull.  "  It 
opened  wide,"  says  one  of  the  narrators,  "  and  out  fell 
upon  the  platform,  in  full  view  of  the  astonished  audience, 
a  mass  of  ruffled  shirt,  gold  watch,  chains,  seals,  and  glitter- 
ing jewels."  According  to  another  veracious  historian,  the 
vest,  when  so  rudely  shaken,  merely  "  opened  and  revealed 
to  his  astonished  hearers  "  the  Colonel's  concealed  gran- 
deur. At  all  events,  Lincoln,  guiltless  of  linen  and  soft 
raiment,  made  the  most  of  the  situation.  Pointing  to  the 
mortified  orator,  he  exclaimed  :  — 

"  Behold  the  hard-fisted  Democrat !  Look,  gentlemen, 
at  this  specimen  of  the  bone  and  sinew.  And  here,  gen- 
tlemen,"—  laying  his  large,  coarse  hand  on  his  heart, 
and  bowing,  — "  here,  at  your  service,  here  is  your  aris- 
»x>crat !  Here  is  one  of  your  silk-stocking  gentry.  Here 
is  your  rag-baron  with  his  lily-white  hands.  Yes,  I  sup- 
pose I,  according  to  my  friend  Taylor,  am  a  bloated  aris- 
tocrat." 

After  speaking  of  the  demagogue's  customary  vaporings, 
he  went  on  :  — 

"  While  Colonel  Taylor  was  making  these  charges 
against  the  Whigs  over  the  country,  riding  in  fine  car- 
riages, wearing  ruffled  shirts,  kid  gloves,  massive  gold 
watch-chains  with  large  gold  seals  and  flourishing  a  heavy 
gold-headed  cane,  I  was  a  poor  boy,  hired  on  a  flat-boat 
at  eight  dollars  a  month,  and  had  only  one  pair  of  breeches 
to  my  back,  and  they  were  buckskin.  Now,  if  you  know  the 
nature  of  buckskin,  when  wet  and  dried  by  the  sun,  it  will 
shrink ;  and  my  breeches  kept  shrinking  until  they  left 
several  inches  of  my  legs  bare,  between  the  tops  of  my 
socks  and  the  lower  part  of  my  breeches ;  and  whilst  I  was 
growing  taller  they  were  becoming  shorter,  and  so  much 
tighter  that  they  left  a  blue  streak  around  my  legs  that 


56        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

can  be  seen  to  this  day.  If  you  call  this  aristocracy,  I 
plead  guilty  to  the  charge." 

Lincoln's  humor  and  the  discomfiture  of  his  opponent 
were  irresistible.  Amidst  Gargantuan  peals  of  laughter, 
in  which  one  of  the  audience  "  nearly  broke  his  heart  with 
mirth,"  was  this  elegant  Democrat  pilloried,  in  Sangamon 
County,  for  the  rest  of  his  career.  As  to  "  the  youug  man," 
he  had  simply  "  taken  down  "  one  more  lofty  antagonist.30 

There  were  times,  during  this  extraordinary  canvass, 
when  raillery,  as  well  as  argument,  failed  to  move  a  crowd  ; 
when,  in  fact,  physical  courage  alone  sufficed  to  control 
the  turbulent  spirits.  It  was  on  such  an  occasion,  one 
evening,  that  Lincoln's  friend,  Edward  Dickinson  Baker., 
who  already  gave  promise  of  the  brilliant  career  that  lay 
before  him,  addressed  a  hostile  audience,  in  the  Springfield 
court-room.  The  place  happened  to  be  directly  below  the 
law  office  of  Stuart  &  Lincoln,  in  which  the  junior  member 
of  the  firm  lay  listening,  through  a  trap-door  that  opened 
above  the  platform.  The  speaker,  as  he  warmed  to  his 
subject,  denounced,  with  the  impetuous  eloquence  that 
afterward  made  him  famous,  the  dishonesty  of  Democratic 
officials.  "Wherever  there  is  a  land-office,  there  you  will 
find  a  Democratic  newspaper  defending  its  corruptions!  " 
he  thundered. 

"  Pull  him  down !  "  shouted  John  B.  Weber,  whose 
brother  was  the  editor  of  the  local  administration  sheet. 

There  was  a  noisy  rush  toward  the  platform,  and,  for 
the  moment,  it  seemed  as  if  Baker,  who  stood  pale  yet 
firm,  would  be  punished  for  his  temerity.  Then,  to  the 
astonishment  of  the  advancing  crowd,  a  lank  form  dangled 
through  the  scuttle,  and  Lincoln  dropped  upon  the  plat- 
form between  them  and  the  object  of  their  anger.  After 
gesticulating  in  vain  for  silence,  he  seized  the  stone  water- 
jug  and  shouted :  — 

"  I  '11  break  it  over  the  head  of  the  first  man  who  lays 
a  hand  on  Baker !  " 

As  the  assailants  hesitated,  he  continued :  — 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         57 

"  Hold  on,  gentlemen,  let  us  not  disgrace  the  age  and 
country  in  which  we  live.  This  is  a  land  where  freedom 
of  speech  is  guaranteed.  Mr.  Baker  has  a  right  to  speak 
and  ought  to  be  permitted  to  do  so.  I  am  here  to  protect 
him,  and  no  man  shall  take  him  from  this  stand,  if  I  can 
prevent  it." 

The  crowd  receded,  quiet  was  restored,  and  Baker 
finished  his  speech  without  further  interruption.31 

It  was  under  somewhat  similar  circumstances,  and  dur- 
ing this  same  contest,  that  the  muscular  candidate  in- 
terposed his  commanding  presence  between  some  enraged 
Democratic  partisans  and  another  Whig  orator.  The 
speaker,  in  that  instance,  was  General  Usher  F.  Linder. 
He  delivered  before  a  large  audience,  in  the  Springfield 
State  House,  a  spirited  address,  which  was  interrupted  by 
threats  and  insults.  Thereupon,  Lincoln  and  Baker,  who 
were  present,  mounted  the  platform  and  stationed  them- 
selves one  on  each  side  of  him.  As  soon  as  the  speaker 
had  concluded,  they  passed  their  arms  through  his,  and 
Lincoln  said :  — 

"  Linder,  Baker  and  I  are  apprehensive  that  you  may 
be  attacked  by  some  of  those  ruffians  who  insulted  you 
from  the  galleries,  and  we  have  come  up  to  escort  you  to 
your  hotel.  We  both  think  we  can  do  a  little  fighting,  so 
we  want  you  to  walk  between  us  until  we  get  you  to  your 
hotel.  Your  quarrel  is  our  quarrel  and  that  of  the  great 
Whig  Party  of  this  nation ;  and  your  speech,  upon  this 
occasion,  is  the  greatest  one  that  has  been  made  by  any 
of  us,  for  which  we  wish  to  honor,  love,  and  defend  you." 

The  three  men  walked  unmolested  through  the  crowd 
that,  following  them  to  the  hotel,  gave  the  orator,  before 
it  dispersed,  three  hearty  cheers.32 

The  violence  that  marked  "  the  hard-cider  campaign  " 
consistently  extended  to  the  very  polls.  On  election  day, 
word  was  brought  to  Lincoln  that  a  certain  railroad  con- 
tractor, named  Radford,  had,  in  the  interests  of  the  Demo- 
crats, taken  possession  with  his  workmen  of  a  polling-place 


5  8         LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

and  was  hindering  the  Whigs  from  voting.  Lincoln,  seiz- 
ing an  ax-handle,  made  for  the  scene  of  action,  on  a  run. 

"  Radford,"  he  said,  as  he  opened  a  way  to  the  ballot- 
box,  "  you  '11  spoil  and  blow,  if  you  live  much  longer."  ^ 

The  contractor,  who  knew  the  character  of  the  man 
with  whom  he  was  dealing,  did  not  stay  to  argue  the 
question.  He  at  once  withdrew,  somewhat  —  it  must  be 
admitted  —  to  the  disappointment  of  the  candidate,  who 
confided  to  his  friend  Speed  that  he  wanted  Radford  to 
show  fight,  as  he  "  intended  just  to  knock  him  down  and 
leave  him  kicking."  Lincoln's  "stern  advice,"  as  one 
writer  terms  it,  was  sufficient,  however,  to  rout  the  heelers, 
and  to  secure  the  Whigs,  that  day,  at  least,  against  any 
further  encroachments  upon  their  rights.34 

The  spirit  with  which  our  campaigner  plunged  into 
conflict  in  behalf  of  his  party,  his  friends,  er  himself,  lost 
none  of  its  vigor  when  the  scene  of  his  activities  was 
transferred  from  the  stump  to  the  legislature.  There, 
though  one  of  the  youngest  and  probably  one  of  the  least 
experienced  of  the  members,  he  took  his  position,  after 
the  initiation  of  his  first  term,  as  if  it  were  a  matter  of 
course,  on  the  battle  line.  In  the  stirring  session  of  1836- 
37,  county  was  arrayed  against  county,  town  against  town. 
Their  several  representatives  struggled  for  a  prize,  dear 
to  every  ambitious  community  —  the  State  capitol.  The 
seat  of  government  was  to  be  removed  from  Vandalia,  but 
whither?  Among  the  most  strenuous  claimants  was  San- 
gamon  County,  which  had  entrusted  the  task  of  securing 
this  honor  for  Springfield  to  its  Representatives  and  Sen- 
ators. They  constituted  a  notable  group,  —  sons  of  Anak, 
all,  —  to  whom  was  applicable,  in  more  respects  than  one, 
their  sobriquet,  the  "Long  Nine";35  and  the  longest  of 
them  was  the  member  from  New  Salem.  His  colleagues, 
recognizing  at  the  very  outset  his  talent  for  leadership, 
assigned  to  him  the  management  of  their  fight ;  for  fight 
indeed  it  was.  The  opponents  of  Springfield  were  numerous 
and  stubborn.  Twice  they  prevailed  so  far  as  to  lay  the 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         59 

bill  in  its  behalf  on  the  table ;  but  Lincoln  contested  every 
inch  of  the  ground.  "  In  those  darkest  hours,"  says  one 
of  his  associates,  "  when  our  Bill  to  all  appearances  was 
beyond  resuscitation,  and  all  our  opponents  were  jubilant 
over  our  defeat,  and  when  friends  could  see  no  hope,  Mr. 
Lincoln  never  for  one  moment  despaired ;  but,  collecting 
his  colleagues  to  his  room  for  consultation,  his  practical 
common-sense,  his  thorough  knowledge  of  human  nature, 
then  made  him  an  overmatch  for  his  compeers  and  for  any 
man  that  I  have  ever  known."  M 

Holding  his  delegation  well  in  hand,  and  casting  its 
influence,  on  most  questions,  as  a  unit,  Lincoln  availed 
himself  of  the  then  current  craze  for  "  internal  improve- 
ments "  so  as  steadily  to  increase  the  Springfield  following. 
To  what  extent  he  indulged  in  the  reprehensible  practice 
of  trading  votes,  and  whether  or  not  he  merited  "  the  repu- 
tation of  being  the  best  log-roller  in  the  legislature,"  may 
not  be  considered  here.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  he  did  roll 
up  the  pledges  for  his  bill,  at  every  move,  and  that,  shortly 
before  adjournment,  he  carried  the  day  for  Springfield. 
This  success,  though  much  of  it  was  due  to  Lincoln's  skil- 
ful political  manipulation,  is  to  be  ascribed,  in  part  as  well, 
to  what  may  be  best  described  as  his  personal  magnetism. 
"  He  made  Webb  and  me  vote  for  the  removal,"  says  Je>sse 
K.  Dubois,  one  of  the  Whig  Assemblymen,  "  though  we 
belonged  to  the  southern  end  of  the  State.  We  defended 
our  vote  before  our  constituents  by  saying  that  necessity 
would  ultimately  force  the  seat  of  government  to  a  cen- 
tral position.  But,  in  reality,  we  gave  the  vote  to  Lincoln 
because  we  liked  him,  because  we  wanted  to  oblige  our 
friend,  and  because  we  recognized  him  as  our  leader." 
His  party  in  the  Lower  House,  remarkable  as  it  must  have 
seemed,  had  in  fact,  before  the  close  of  the  session,  begun 
to  look  for  guidance  to  this  new  man.  In  that  uneven 
contest  of  Sangamon  against  the  field  were  manifested 
not  a  few  of  the  qualities  whkh  parliamentary  minorities 
look  for  in  their  captains. 


60        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

Having  demonstrated  his  ability  to  conduct  an  aggres- 
sive campaign,  it  remained  for  the  Sangamon  Chief,  as 
Lincoln  was  now  sometimes  called,  to  prove  his  mettle 
on  the  defensive.  An  opportunity  soon  presented  itself, 
inasmuch  as  somewhat  of  the  animosity  engendered 
by  the  struggle  for  the  capitol  outlived  the  legislature 
that  dealt  with  the  question.  In  the  extra  session,  called 
during  the  following  summer,  the  opponents  of  Spring- 
field made  a  vigorous  attempt  to  repeal  the  law  which 
had  established  that  town  as  the  seat  of  government.  The 
movement  was  led  by  General  William  L.  D.  Ewing,  ex- 
United  States  Senator,  who  in  a  stinging  address  accused 
the  "  Long  Nine  "  of  having  won  their  victory  by  "  chi- 
canery and  trickery."  Sparing  neither  invective  nor  sar- 
casm, he  arraigned  the  members  from  Sangamon  with  a 
severity  that  called  for  immediate  reply.  Who  would  take 
up  the  gage  flung  down  by  this  formidable  antagonist  — 
a  man  of  culture,  standing,  and  distinguished  personal 
courage  ?  Lincoln  promptly  did  so.  In  a  spirited  speech, 
he  defended  the  "  Long  Nine,"  and  made  countercharges 
of  corruption  against  Ewing  and  his  associates.  So  keen 
was  this  denunciation  that  the  House  believed  the  speaker, 
as  one  of  the  auditors  reports,  to  be  "  digging  his  own 
grave."  "  This  was  the  time,"  says  that  same  friend, 
"  that  I  began  to  conceive  a  very  high  opinion  of  the 
talents  and  personal  courage  of  Abraham  Lincoln."  And 
with  reason,  for  General  Ewing,  masterful  and  hot-tem- 
pered, would  surely  close  such  a  controversy  with  a  chal- 
lenge. "  Gentlemen,"  he  said,  turning  to  the  Sangamon 
section,  "have  you  no  other  champion  than  this  coarse 
and  vulgar  fellow  to  bring  into  the  lists  against  me  ?  Do 
you  suppose  that  I  will  condescend  to  break  a  lance  with 
your  low  and  obscure  colleague  ? "  What  justification 
Ewing  had,  on  that  occasion,  for  so  harsh  a  reference  to 
his  opponent's  breeding  cannot  be  determined,  as  there  is 
no  report  of  what  Lincoln  said,  extant.  The  speech  must 
have  been  effectual,  however.  "  Our  friend  carries  the 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         61 

true  Kentucky  rifle,"  was  the  comment  of  a  Springfield 
editor,  on  Lincoln,  at  about  that  time,  "  and  when  he  fires, 
he  seldom  fails  of  sending  the  shot  home."  OT  The  weapon 
used  on  Ewing  was  doubtless  double-barreled  ;  for  the 
scheme  to  have  the  Capital  Law  repealed  fell  to  the  ground, 
and  the  assailant  of  the  "  Long  Nine  "  was  so  hard  hit 
that  the  interference  of  friends  alone  prevented  a  duel.38 
Small  wonder  that  the  General  did  not  approve  of  "  this 
coarse  and  vulgar  fellow,"  or  that  the  Sangamon  delega- 
tion was  content  to  leave  its  standard  in  the  hands  of  such 
a  champion. 

The  force  and  fearlessness  that  had  marked  the  reply 
to  Ewing  were  not  soon  forgotten.  Whenever  thereafter, 
in  the  legislature  or  outside  of  it,  the  "  Long  Nine  "  were 
assailed,  —  and  their  enemies  were  numerous  enough,  — • 
Lincoln  was  put  forward  to  defend  them.  Once  they  were 
intemperately  attacked  by  Jesse  B.  Thomas,  a  lawyer  of 
ability  and  one  of  the  most  distinguished  Democratic 
politicians  in  the  State.  While  he  spoke,  Lincoln,  who 
happened  to  be  absent  from  the  meeting,  was  sent  for. 
Hastening  to  the  court-house,  in  which  the  incident  took 
place,  the  Sangamon  chief  mounted  the  platform  after 
the  speaker  and  made  a  reply,  the  language  of  which 
none  of  his  auditors  remembered,  but  the  manner  and 
effect  of  which  were  never  effaced  from  their  memories. 
Denunciation  of  Thomas,  ridicule  of  his  foibles,  even 
mimicry  of  certain  physical  peculiarities  followed  one 
another,  in  rapid  succession,  amidst  uproarious  laughter 
and  applause.  So  sharp  was  the  onslaught  that  its  object 
is  said  to  have  wept  with  vexation  as  he  hurried  from  the 
scene.  His  emotion  tempered  the  triumph  of  his  adver- 
sary, who  hunted  him  up,  and,  with  characteristic  good 
nature,  apologized  for  the  severity  of  the  reply.  This 
speech,  like  the  invective  against  Ewing,  has  unfortu- 
nately not  been  preserved.  The  impression  it  made,  how- 
ever, in  the  political  circles  of  Springfield  may  be  inferred 
from  the  fact  that  it  became  a  byword  under  the  title 


62        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

of  "  the  skinning  of  Thomas."  From  that  time  forward, 
moreover,  but  few  Democratic  orators,  if  we  may  judge 
from  the  records,  cared  to  concern  themselves  with  the 
iniquities  of  the  "  Long  Nine."  M 

The  judgment  of  Sangamon  in  the  selection  of  its 
chief  was  vindicated,  not  alone  by  his  successful  battles 
in  its  behalf,  but  also  by  the  action  of  his  party.  The 
Whigs,  in  the  Assembly  of  1837,  as  has  been  said,  had 
begun  to  regard  Lincoln  as  their  head.  In  1838,  when  the 
Lower  House  was  organizing,  they  awarded  him  that  dis- 
tinction, beyond  a  doubt,  by  making  him  their  candidate 
for  the  speakership.  This  was  no  small  honor  for  a  man 
of  twenty -nine,  particularly  when  that  man  was  the  "  low 
and  obscure  "  Lincoln  ;  while  his  opponent,  the  Democratic 
nominee,  happened  to  be  no  less  a  notability  than  that 
Ewing  who  had  applied  these  epithets  to  him,  a  few  months 
before.  As  the  Whigs  were  in  the  minority,  they  of  course 
did  not  elect  their  candidate.  He  maintained  his  place, 
nevertheless,  at  their  head,  and  again  received  their  votes 
for  the  office,  in  the  legislature  of  1840.  Then,  as  in  the 
former  election,  he  was  pitted  against  Ewing,  and,  because 
of  the  weakness  of  his  party,  with  the  same  result.  But 
the  vital  fact  for  us,  the  point  which  stands  out  above  the 
flat  details  of  these  speakership  contests,  is  the  elevation 
of  Offutt's  gawky  clerk,  in  an  almost  incredibly  short 
period,  to  parliamentary  leadership. 

The  steps  by  which  Lincoln  mounted  to  the  mastery  of 
his  party  in  the  legislature  are  not  clearly  defined.  Nor 
is  it  easy  to  place  one's  hand  upon  the  quality  or  quali- 
ties, in  his  make-up,  which  contributed  most  to  that  result. 
Courage,  force,  devotion,  tact,  and  ready  wit  underlie 
the  few  narratives  here  set  down ;  but  as  the  incidents 
were  selected  with  a  view  to  illustration,  rather  than  ta 
historical  completeness,  they  leave  unnoticed  other  traits 
that  deserve  mention,  even  though  they  have  not  been 
severally  crystallized  in  the  heart  of  a  good  story.  The 
political  honesty  that  led  Lincoln  to  cast  his  lot  with  a 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         63 

party  in  apparently  hopeless  minority ;  the  loyalty  that 
held  him  true  to  the  interests  of  that  party,  when  others 
turned  their  coats ;  the  intellectual  thoroughness  and 
candor  which  rendered  him  formidable  in  debate,  as  well 
as  influential  in  council ;  the  extreme  of  self-reliance  that 
rarely  required  assistance  or  advice,  yet  could  receive 
without  impatience  what  it  did  not  want;  the  homely, 
unaffected  good  humor  that  expressed  itself  at  every  turn 
m  a  funny  story  or  a  sympathetic  word,  and  won  for  him 
the  title  of  "  uncommon  good  fellow,"  even  from  men 
with  whom  he  would  neither  smoke  nor  drink,  —  these 
also  are  some  of  the  plus  factors,  as  one  might  say,  which 
in  this  his  first  political  epoch  already  entered  into  the 
making  of  the  master's  character.  He  cannot,  it  is  true, 
be  said  to  have  evinced,  all  in  all,  remarkable  generalship, 
either  on  the  stump  or  in  the  House.  Indeed,  if  Lincoln's 
public  career  had  closed  with  his  last  term  in  the  Assem- 
bly, even  local  history  might  have  found  scant  inspira- 
tion in  those  few  electioneering  episodes,  or  in  the  wild- 
cat legislation  to  which  he  contributed  no  unimportant 
part.  As  it  is,  however,  the  decade  forms  an  essential 
link  in  the  chain  of  our  investigation.  It  may  be  termed 
the  transition  period  from  physical  to  intellectual  power. 
Both  held  sway  by  turns,  yet  so  conjointly  that  we  can 
almost  discern  how  the  aggressive  quality  of  the  one  was 
merged  into  that  of  the  other.  In  this  readjustment  of 
his  forces  Lincoln,  still  held  his  own.  Novel  conditions 
speedily  became  familiar  environment,  and  new  men, 
great  as  well  as  small,  took  therein  their  proper  places. 
As  for  the  tall  member  from  Sangamon,  when  he  found 
his  place,  it  was  —  need  we  add  ?  —  at  the  head. 

Nor  did  Lincoln  fail  to  maimtain  this  ascendancy  in 
several  severe  quarrels  that  took  place  outside  of  the 
legislature.  Two,  of  a  quasi-political  nature,  in  which  he 
became  involved  subsequent  to  his  controversy  with 
Ewing,  afford  further  glimpses  of  his  character,  on  its 
forceful  side.  The  first  of  these  encounters  occurred  dur- 


64        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

ing  the  summer  of  1837,  shortly  after  he  had  become  a 
lawyer  and  had  taken  up  his  residence  in  Springfield,  as 
the  partner  of  a  Black  Hawk  War  comrade,  Major  John 
T.  Stuart.  The  firm  had  been  retained  by  a  widow  to 
prosecute  a  claim  against  a  certain  General  James  Adams, 
whom  she  accused  of  acquiring  title  to  a  ten-acre  lot  by 
the  forgery  of  her  deceased  husband's  signature.  While 
the  case  was  pending,  the  defendant,  a  chronic  aspirant 
for  public  office,  became  a  candidate  for  the  place  of 
probate  justice.  A  few  days  before  the  election,  he  was 
unsparingly  attacked  for  his  conduct,  in  an  anonymous 
handbill,  which  closed  with  the  sentence  :  — 

"  I  shall  not  subscribe  my  name,  but  hereby  authorize 
the  editor  of  the  Journal  to  give  it  up  to  any  one  who 
may  call  for  it." 

Copies  of  the  document  having  been  scattered  broad- 
cast about  the  streets,  they  gave  rise  to  a  controversy, 
which  was  heightened  rather  than  allayed  by  the  election 
of  Adams.  He  denied  the  charges  in  a  long  letter  to  the 
Sangamon  Journal.  The  issue  of  the  paper  in  which  his 
communication  appeared  also  contained  a  reprint  of  the 
original  handbill,  with  an  announcement  by  the  editor 
that  "A.  Lincoln,  Esq.,"  was  its  author.  The  quarrel 
raged  for  several  weeks  in  the  columns  of  the  Journal 
and  of  the  Springfield  Republican.  Step  by  step,  Lincoln 
followed  Adams  up,  exposing  the  seamy  side  of  his  career, 
and  capping  the  climax  with  a  copy  of  an  indictment  for 
forgery,  found  against  him  in  Oswego  County,  New  York, 
nineteen  years  before.  An  unscrupulous  adventurer,  this ; 
yet  the  young  barrister  does  not  seem  to  have  hesitated. 
In  fact,  the  worse  "  the  General's "  character  proved  to 
be,  as  his  past  life  was  unfolded,  the  more  fearless  became 
his  adversary's  denunciations.  Replying  to  Adams's  flings 
at  lawyers,  Lincoln  wrote  :  — 

"  He  attempted  to  impose  himself  upon  the  community 
as  a  lawyer,  and  he  actually  carried  the  attempt  so  far  as 
to  induce  a  man  who  was  under  the  charge  of  murder  to 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         65 

entrust  the  defence  of  his  life  to  his  hands,  and  finally 
took  his  money  and  got  him  hanged.  Is  this  the  man  that 
is  to  raise  a  breeze  in  his  favor  by  abusing  lawyers  ?  .  .  . 
If  he  is  not  a  lawyer,  he  is  a  liar ;  for  he  proclaimed 
himself  a  lawyer,  and  got  a  man  hanged  by  depending 
on  him.  .  .  .  Farewell,  General,  I  will  see  you  again  at 
court,  if  not  before  —  when  and  where  we  will  settle  the 
question  whether  you  or  the  widow  shall  have  the  land."  ** 

The  widow  did  get  the  land,  Adams  was  completely 
discredited,  and  one  more  scalp  hung  from  the  belt  of  the 
Sangamon  Chief. 

The  second  quarrel,  like  the  first,  mingled  public  with 
private  motives,  and  grew,  in  similar  fashion,  out  of  an 
anonymous  composition  from  Lincoln's  pen.  In  the  one 
case,  as  in  the  other,  moreover,  he  manifested  the  fear- 
less and  masterful  spirit  with  which  we  have  by  this  time 
become  familiar.  But  further  than  that  the  resemblance 
did  not  go ;  for  Lincoln's  exposure  of  a  scamp  like  Adams 
had  little  in  common  with  his  unwarrantable  attack  upon 
James  Shields.  Shields  was  a  brave,  quick-tempered 
young  Irishman,  with  a  full  share  of  his  countrymen's 
taste  for  love  and  politics.  An  ardent  Democrat  of  course, 
he  had  been  elected  to  the  Illinois  Assembly  even  before 
observing  the  trivial  formality  of  naturalization,  and,  a 
few  years  later,  his  services  to  the  party  had  been  re- 
warded with  the  place  of  State  Auditor.  The  office  gave 
him  a  certain  prominence,  which  he  is  said  to  have  made 
the  most  of  in  Springfield  society.  In  truth,  this  gallant 
bachelor  from  County  Tyrone  was  a  very  "lion  among 
ladies."  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  his  social 
vanities,  no  less  than  his  political  flourishes,  offered  a 
tempting  mark  to  the  assaults  of  the  Whigs.  Their  ani- 
mus against  the  Auditor  was  intensified,  during  the  sum- 
mer of  1842,  when  the  insolvent  condition  of  the  State 
treasury  and  the  depreciation  in  the  value  of  State  Bank 
notes  caused  the  Governor  and  his  financial  officers  to 
issue  a  proclamation  forbidding  the  payment  of  taxes 


66        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

in  the  almost  worthless  bank  paper.  As  this  was,  practi- 
cally, the  only  money  in  the  hands  of  the  people,  they 
assailed  the  Democratic  State  government,  from  every 
quarter,  with  an  outburst  of  indignation,  which  the 
Whigs  —  regardless  of  their  own  part  in  the  extravagant 
improvement  legislation  that  had  given  rise  to  the  trouble 
—  lost  no  opportunity  of  stimulating.  The  newspapers 
and  leaders  of  the  minority  party  were  severe  in  their 
censure  of  the  State  authorities,  among  whom,  by  the  way, 
the  Auditor  had  rendered  himself  especially  obnoxious. 
Upon  him,  in  the  midst  of  the  denunciations,  fell  the 
heaviest  charge  of  all ;  for  it  was  directed  by  that  same 
Kentucky  marksman  who  seldom  failed,  as  one  of  his 
admirers  told  us,  "  of  sending  the  shot  home." 

The  caustic  humor  that,  from  The  First  Chronicles 
of  Reuben  to  "  the  skinning  of  Thomas,"  had  now  and 
then  been  so  effectively  employed  by  Lincoln  in  mastering 
an  opponent,  here  again  came  into  play.  He  contributed 
to  the  Sangamo  Journal  of  September  2,  edited  at  the 
time  by  his  friend  Simeon  Francis,  a  singular  composi- 
tion. It  purported  to  be  A  Letter  from  the  Lost  Town- 
ships, written  by  a  Democratic  widow  who  signed  herself 
"  Rebecca." u  In  robust  country  dialect,  she  denounced 
"  these  officers  of  State  "  as  a  hypocritical  set,  that  ought 
to  be  supplanted  in  the  places  they  disgraced  by  men  who 
would  "  do  more  work  for  less  pay,  and  take  fewer  airs 
while  they  are  doing  it."  The  "  airs  "  of  the  Auditor  had 
particularly  aroused  Rebecca's  ire;  for  upon  that  func- 
tionary burst  almost  the  whole  torrent  of  her  coarse 
ridicule. 

"  I  seed  him,"  she  reports  a  neighbor  as  saying,  "  when 
I  was  down  in  Springfield  last  winter.  They  had  a  sort 
of  a  gatherin'  there  one  night  among  the  grandees,  they 
called  a  fair.  All  the  gals  about  town  was  there,  and  all 
the  handsome  widows  and  married  women,  finickin'  about 
trying  to  look  like  gals.  ...  I  looked  in  at  the  window, 
and  there  was  this  same  fellow  Shields  floatin'  about 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         67 

on  the  air,  without  heft  or  earthly  substances,  just  like  a 
lock  of  cat  fur  where  cats  had  been  fighting.  He  was  pay- 
ing his  money  to  this  one,  and  that  one,  and  t'other  one, 
and  sufferin'  great  loss  because  it  was  n't  silver  instead  of 
State  paper ;  and  the  sweet  distress  he  seemed  to  be  in  — 
his  very  features,  in  the  ecstatic  agony  of  his  soul,  spoke 
audibly  and  distinctly :  — '  Dear  girls,  it  is  distressing, 
but  I  cannot  marry  you  all.  Too  well  I  know  how  much 
you  suffer ;  but  do,  do  remember,  it  is  not  my  fault  that 
I  am  so  handsome  and  so  interesting.'  As  this  last  was 
expressed  by  a  most  exquisite  contortion  of  his  face,  he 
seized  hold  of  one  of  their  hands,  and  squeezed,  and  held 
on  to  it  about  a  quarter  of  an  hour.  '  Oh,  my  good  fel- 
low ! '  says  I  to  myself,  '  if  that  was  one  of  our  Democratic 
gals  in  the  Lost  Townships,  the  way  you  'd  get  a  brass  pin 
let  into  you  would  be  about  up  to  the  head.' " 

So  much  for  ridicule ;  as  to  abuse,  there  was  nothing  in 
the  letter  more  severe  than  this  comment  on  a  circular, 
issued  by  the  Auditor :  — 

"  I  say  it 's  a  lie,  and  not  a  well  told  one  at  that.  It 
grins  out  like  a  copper  dollar.  Shields  is  a  fool  as  well  as 
a  liar.  With  him  truth  is  out  of  the  question  ;  and  as  for 
getting  a  good,  bright,  passable  lie  out  of  him,  you  might 
as  well  try  to  strike  fire  from  a  cake  of  tallow." 

Fighting  words  these,  as  the  writer  must  have  known, 
especially  when  applied  to  a  man  of  Shields's  calibre. 

Touched  to  the  quick  by  the  satire,  and  enraged  by 
the  attack  upon  his  honor,  the  hot-blooded  young  Auditor 
did  not  conduct  himself  with  that  coolness  which  is  alone 
effectual  against  such  assaults.  On  the  contrary,  amidst 
the  merriment  of  the  town,  he  gave  way  to  his  fury  after 
a  fashion  that  must  have  gratified  his  assailant.  More 
than  that,  it  started  the  mischievous  pens  of  two  Whig- 
gish  and,  we  may  add,  waggish  young  ladies,  Mary  Todd 
and  her  friend  Julia  M.  Jayne.  Their  interest  in  politics 
is  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  within  the  next  few 
months  they  became  respectively  Mrs.  Abraham  Lincoln 


68         LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

and  Mrs.  Lyman  Trumbull.  Moreover,  what  is  more  to 
the  point,  the  former  of  these  ladies  was,  at  the  time,  con- 
ducting a  clandestine  renewal  of  her  interrupted  court- 
ship with  the  author  of  A  Letter  from  the  Lost  Townships, 
under  the  roof  of  Editor  Francis.  His  hospitality  opened 
to  her  the  columns  of  the  Journal,  as  well  as  his  house, 
when  she  and  her  confidante,  taking  up  the  theme  where 
Lincoln  had  left  it,  concocted  a  second  letter.  In  this 
sequel,  Shields's  threats  of  vengeance  appear  to  have 
frightened  Rebecca  into  a  proposal  of  marriage,  by  way 
of  compromise.  She  prefers  "matrimonial  bliss"  to  "a 
lickin' " ;  but,  if  the  Auditor  persist  in  his  demands  for 
"personal  satisfaction,"  she,  on  her  side,  as  the  challenged 
party,  will  insist  on  the  choice  of  weapons.  "Which  bein' 
the  case,"  she  concludes,  "  I  '11  tell  you  in  confidence  that 
I  never  fights  with  anything  but  broomsticks,  or  hot  water, 
or  a  shovelful  of  coals,  or  some  such  thing ;  the  former  of 
which,  being  somewhat  like  a  shillalah,  may  not  be  very 
objectional  to  him.  I  will  give  him  choice,  however,  in 
one  thing,  and  that  is,  whether,  when  we  fight,  I  shall 
wear  breeches  or  he  petticoats ;  for,  I  presume  that  change 
is  sufficient  to  place  us  on  an  equality."  But  the  affair 
terminated  —  that  is  to  say  according  to  the  fair  satirists 
—  without  bloodshed;  for  they  closed  their  literary  labors 
with  some  doggerel  verses,  celebrating  the  nuptials  of  the 
bachelor  and  the  widow. 

Not  so  peacefully  disposed  was  the  object  of  these 
attacks.  In  his  veins,  be  it  remembered,  still  flowed  the 
ichor  of  Donnybrook.  He  was  an  expert  swordsman, 
moreover,  and  in  his  youth  had  been  an  instructor  in 
fencing.  Smarting  more  than  ever  under  a  sense  of  injury, 
he  sent  his  friend  General  John  D.  Whiteside,  of  Black 
Hawk  War  fame,  to  the  editor,  with  a  demand  for  the 
name  of  the  author.  If  this  was  not  complied  with,  Fran- 
cis was  himself  to  be  held  responsible.  In  his  dilemma, 
the  editor  consulted  Lincoln,  who,  about  to  leave  town 
on  the  fall  circuit,  directed  Francis  to  give  his  name,  but 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         69 

to  make  no  mention  of  the  ladies.  That  the  creator  of 
"  Rebecca "  understood  what  the  situation  involved  is 
evinced  by  the  fact  that  he  had  sought  out  a  certain 
dragoon  major,  who,  broadsword  in  hand,  drilled  him  in 

"  fencing,  and  the  use  of  arms, 
The  art  of  urging  and  avoiding  harms, 
The  noble  science  and  the  mastering  skill 
Of  making  just  approaches  how  to  kill." 

As  for  Shields,  following  Lincoln  to  Tremont,  he  lost 
as  little  time  as  might  be  in  sending  Whiteside  to  him 
with  a  letter  which,  considering  the  state  of  society  in  the 
Springfield  of  that  day  and  the  writer's  provocation,  we 
are  hardly  inclined  to  ridicule.  The  missive,  truth  to  say, 
Conformed  to  Sir  Lucius  O'Trigger's  rule,  that  when  a 
man  frames  a  challenge,  he  must  "  do  the  thing  decently 
and  like  a  Christian."  It  protested,  temperately  enough, 
against  the  "  slander,  vituperation,  and  personal  abuse " 
in  the  Lost  Townships  articles,  and  concluded  with :  — 

"  I  will  not  take  the  trouble  of  inquiring  into  the  reason 
of  all  this,  but  I  will  take  the  liberty  of  requiring  a  full, 
positive,  and  absolute  retraction  of  all  offensive  allusions 
used  by  you  in  these  communications,  in  relation  to  my 
private  character  and  standing  as  a  man,  as  an  apology 
for  the  insults  conveyed  in  them.  This  may  prevent  con- 
sequences which  no  one  will  regret  more  than  myself." 

Lincoln's  reply  was  singularly  lacking  in  regard  to  the 
homely  candor  that  is  the  particular  charm  of  his  corre- 
spondence. He  wrote :  — 

"  You  say  you  have  been  informed,  through  the  medium 
of  the  editor  of  the  Journal,  that  I  am  the  author  of 
certain  articles  in  that  paper  which  you  deem  personally 
abusive  of  you ;  and,  without  stopping  to  inquire  whether 
I  really  am  the  author,  or  to  point  out  what  is  offensive 
in  them,  you  demand  an  unqualified  retraction  of  all  that 
is  offensive,  and  then  proceed  to  hint  at  consequences. 
Now,  sir,  there  is  in  this  so  much  assumption  of  facts, 
and  so  much  of  menace  as  to  consequences,  that  I  cannot 


7o        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

submit  to  answer  that  note  any  further  than  I  have,  and 
to  add,  that  the  consequences  to  which  I  suppose  you 
allude  would  be  matter  of  as  great  regret  to  me  as  it 
possibly  could  to  you." 

Shields  rejoined,  disavowing  any  intention  of  menacing 
Lincoln,  asking  whether  he  had  written  the  articles  in 
question,  and  repeating  his  request,  if  so,  for  a  retraction 
of  the  offensive  allusions.  This  letter  Lincoln  refused  to 
answer  unless  Shields's  first  communication  were  with- 
drawn ;  but  the  demand  met  with  no  response. 

By  this  time,  the  critical  phase  of  the  quarrel  had 
been  reached.  The  principals,  as  well  as  their  representa- 
tives, treated  one  another  with  the  top-lofty  dignity  which 
usage  immemorial  has,  for  such  occasion,  established. 
Lincoln,  nevertheless,  would  gladly  have  withdrawn  from 
the  squabble,  if  this  had  been  possible  without  discredit. 
To  one  of  his  friends,  Dr.  E.  H.  Merryman,  who,  with 
another,  hastened  to  Tremont,  in  order  to  stand  by  him 
during  the  affair,  he  expressed  himself  as  wholly  opposed 
to  dueling,  and  as  willing  to  do  anything  to  avoid  a  fight, 
that  might  not  degrade  him  in  the  estimation  of  himself 
or  of  his  friends.42  Accordingly,  in  some  instructions 
which  he  drew  up  for  the  doctor's  guidance,  he  pledged 
himself,  provided  all  letters  were  withdrawn  and  repara- 
tion were  properly  requested,  to  give  this  answer :  — 

"  I  did  write  the  *  Lost  Townships '  letter  which  ap- 
peared in  the  Journal  of  the  2d  instant,  but  had  no  par- 
ticipation in  any  form  in  any  other  article  alluding  to 
you.  I  wrote  that  wholly  for  political  effect.  I  had  no 
intention  of  injuring  your  personal  or  private  character 
or  standing  as  a  man  or  a  gentleman  ;  and  I  did  not  then 
think,  and  do  not  now  think,  that  that  article  could  pro- 
duce, or  has  produced,  that  effect  against  you;  and  had  I 
anticipated  such  an  effect,  I  would  hare  forborne  to  write 
it.  And  I  will  add  that  your  conduct  toward  me,  so  far  as 
I  know,  had  always  been  gentlemanly,  and  that  I  had  no 
personal  pique  against  you,  and  no  cause  for  any." 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         71 

The  memorandum  then  prescribed  the  conditions  under 
which,  if  the  explanation  were  not  accepted,  the  writer, 
as  the  challenged  party,  would  fight.  The  meeting  was  to 
take  place  near  Alton,  on  the  Missouri  side  of  the  river, 
within  the  following  two  or  three  days. 

"  Weapons :  —  Cavalry  broadswords  of  the  largest  size, 
precisely  equal  in  all  respects  and  such  as  now  used  by 
the  cavalry  company  at  Jacksonville. 

"  Position  :  —  A  plank  ten  feet  long,  and  from  nine  to 
twelve  inches  broad,  to  be  firmly  fixed  on  edge,  on  the 
ground,  as  the  line  between  us,  which  neither  is  to  pass 
his  foot  over  upon  forfeit  of  his  life.  Next,  a  line  drawn 
on  the  ground  on  either  side  of  said  plank  and  parallel 
with  it,  each  at  the  distance  of  the  whole  length  of  the 
sword  and  three  feet  additional  from  the  plank ;  and 
the  passing  of  Yj  own  such  line  by  either  party  during 
the  fight  shall  be  deemed  a  surrender  of  the  contest." 

This  formidable  document  was  read  by  Dr.  Merryman 
to  Shields's  friend  General  Whiteside,  but  without  the 
desired  result ;  for,  a  few  days  thereafter,  two  parties,  con- 
sisting of  the  principals,  their  seconds,  surgeons,  and  other 
attendants,  met  on  an  island  —  Bloody  Island,*3  if  you 
please  —  in  the  Mississippi,  below  Alton.  Upon  reaching 
the  ground,  Shields  found  Lincoln  already  there,  ax  in 
hand  and  coat  thrown  off,  clearing  away  the  underbrush, 
for  that  fateful  parallelogram.  Before  the  duel  could  take 
place,  however,  Colonel  John  J.  Hardin  and  Dr.  R.  W. 
English,  common  friends  of  the  combatants,  arrived  upon 
the  scene,  and  patched  up  a  peace  by  persuading  Shields 
to  withdraw  his  letters  and  to  accept  the  explanation  that 
Lincoln  had  offered. 

The  duelists  left  the  field  in  amiable  spirits  toward 
each  other,  as  may  be  gathered  from  the  reminiscences 
of  an  old  resident  of  Alton,  who,  with  others,  stood  at 
the  ferry  anxiously  awaiting  the  issue.  "  It  was  not  very 
long,"  said  he,  "  until  the  boat  was  seen  returning  to  Alton. 
As  it  drew  near,  I  saw  what  was  presumably  a  mortally 


72         LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

wounded  man  lying  on  the  bow  of  the  boat.  His  shirt 
appeared  to  be  bathed  in  blood.  I  distinguished  Jacob 
Smith,  a  constable,  fanning  the  supposed  victim,  vigor- 
ously. The  people,  on  the  bank,  held  their  breath  in  sus- 
pense, and  guesses  were  freely  made  as  to  which  of  the  two 
men  had  been  so  terribly  wounded.  But  suspense  was 
soon  turned  to  chagrin  and  relief  when  it  transpired  that 
the  supposed  candidate  for  another  world  was  nothing 
more  nor  less  than  a  log  covered  with  a  red  shirt.  This 
ruse  had  been  resorted  to  in  order  to  fool  the  people  on  the 
levee  ;  and  it  worked  to  perfection.  Lincoln  and  Shields 
came  off  the  boat  together,  chatting  in  a  nonchalant  and 
pleasant  manner." 44  Your  votaries  of  "  the  code  "  might 
frown  upon  that  playful  device  of  the  bleeding  log.  It  set 
at  naught  the  niceties  of  decorum,  which  are  their  meat 
and  drink  ;  yet  how  characteristic  it  was  of  at  least  one 
of  those  smiling  gentlemen  ! 

All  the  hot  blood  engendered  by  this  affair  did  not,  as 
might  be  supposed,  cool  off  so  readily.  Two  weeks  later, 
we  find  Lincoln  writing  to  his  friend  Speed  :  — 

"  You  have  heard  of  my  duel  with  Shields,  and  I  have 
now  to  inform  you  that  the  dueling  business  still  rages  in 
this  city.  Day  before  yesterday,  Shields  challenged  But- 
ler,45 who  accepted,  and  proposed  fighting  next  morning, 
at  sunrise,  in  Bob  Allen's  meadow,  one  hundred  yards' 
distance,  with  rifles.  To  this  Whiteside,  Shields's  second, 
said  'no'  because  of  the  law.  Thus  ended  duel  No.  2. 
Yesterday,  Whiteside  chose  to  consider  himself  insulted 
by  Dr.  Merryman,  so  sent  him  a  kind  of  quasi-challenge, 
inviting  him  to  meet  him  at  the  Planter's  House,  in  St. 
Louis,  on  the  next  Friday,  to  settle  their  difficulty.  Merry- 
man made  me  his  friend,  and  sent  Whiteside  a  note,  in- 
quiring to  know  if  he  meant  his  note  as  a  challenge,  and 
if  so,  that  he  would,  according  to  the  law  in  such  case 
made  and  provided,  prescribe  the  terms  of  the  meeting."  ** 

Duel  No.  3,  suffice  it  to  say,  —  for  we  have  had  enough 
of  "  the  dueling  business,"  —  was,  like  No.  1  and  No.  2, 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         73 

fought  with  the  tongues  and  the  pens  of  the  combatants 
to  a  bloodless  finish. 

Having  made  his  single  appearance  as  a  principal, 
and  then  as  a  second,  on  the  so-called  "  field  of  honor," 
Lincoln  quickly  recovered  his  moral  equilibrium.  He  ap- 
pears to  have  become  ashamed  of  his  share  in  the  quarrel, 
and  to  have  refrained,  for  the  most  part,  from  discussing 
it  with  his  friends.  Several  of  them,  in  fact,  record  their 
failures  to  draw  him  into  conversation  on  the  subject. 
His  partner,  Mr.  Herndon,  reports  this  one  voluntary 
reference  to  the  duel :  — 

"  I  did  not  intend  to  hurt  Shields  unless  I  did  so  clearly 
in  self-defence.  If  it  had  been  necessary,  I  could  have 
split  him  from  the  crown  of  his  head  to  the  end  of  his 
backbone." 47 

Lincoln's  confidence  in  his  power  to  vanquish  Shields, 
no  less  than  his  freedom  from  animosity  towards  him, 
was  further  manifested  shortly  after  the  meeting,  in  a 
few  words  dropped  to  Usher  F.  Linder.  As  they  stood 
together,  near  the  Danville  court-house,  Lincoln  picked 
up  a  lath  and  went  through  the  broadsword  manual.  His 
friend,  improving  the  occasion,  asked  why  broadswords 
had  been  chosen  for  the  proposed  duel.  The  man  with 
the  lath  answered :  — 

"  To  tell  you  the  truth,  Linder,  I  did  n't  want  to  kill 
Shields  and  felt  sure  I  could  disarm  him,  having,  had 
about  a  month  to  learn  the  broadsword  exercise  ;  and 
furthermore,  I  did  n't  want  the  damned  fellow  to  kill  me, 
which  I  rather  think  he  would  have  done  if  we  had  se- 
lected pistols."  ** 

The  ghost  of  the  duel  still  hovered  over  the  scene.  In 
the  spring  of  the  following  year,  Lincoln  closed  a  letter 
on  politics  to  Hardin  with :  — 

"  I  wish  you  would  measure  one  of  the  largest  of  those 
swords  we  took  to  Alton,  and  write  me  the  length  of  it, 
from  tip  of  the  point  to  tip  of  the  hilt,  in  feet  and  inches. 
I  have  a  dispute  about  the  length."  49 


74        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

Thereafter,  Lincoln's  friends  respected  his  desire  that 
the  affair  should  not  be  spoken  of,  and  it  seemed  to  have 
been  forgotten. 

Greatly  to  Mr.  Herndon's  surprise,  while  on  his 
visit  in  the  Eastern  States  during  the  spring  of  1858,  to 
promote  his  partner's  senatorial  ambitions,  he  was  fre- 
quently asked  for  an  account  of  the  so-called  duel.  Upon 
his  return,  the  fact  was  reported  to  Lincoln,  who  sadly 
remarked :  — 

"  If  all  the  good  things  I  have  ever  done  are  remem- 
bered as  long  and  well  as  my  scrape  with  Shields,  it  is 
plain  I  shall  not  soon  be  forgotten."  ^ 

The  "  scrape "  was  not  so  well  remembered  by  the 
speaker's  enemies  as  might  have  been  expected.  Two 
years  later,  the  muckrake  of  a  bitter  opposition  failed  — 
if  we  may  judge  from  the  now  available  campaign  litera- 
ture of  1860  —  to  turn  up  the  incident.  So  the  "  Party  of 
Moral  Ideas  "  was  spared  the  mortification  of  defending 
its  candidate's  atrocities  as  a  duelist.51  During  the  Civil 
War,  the  story,  having  again  made  its  rounds,  returned 
to  plague  its  hero,  for  the  last  time.  A  few  weeks  before 
his  death,  the  President,  together  with  Mrs.  Lincoln, 
entertained  a  distinguished  officer  of  the  army.  During 
the  conversation,  the  visitor  said  :  — 

"  Is  it  true,  Mr.  President,  as  I  have  heard,  that  you 
once  went  out  to  fight  a  duel  for  the  sake  of  the  lady  by 
your  side  ?  " 

"  I  do  not  deny  it,"  answered  Mr.  Lincoln,  with  a 
flushed  face,  "but  if  you  desire  my  friendship,  you  will 
never  mention  the  circumstance  again." 52 

This  admission,  which  indeed  was  but  the  grudging 
half-truth  of  a  man  who  wished  to  dispose  of  a  distaste- 
ful topic,  seems  to  warrant  the  oft-repeated  claim  that  Miss 
Todd  was  responsible  for  all  the  obnoxious  articles,  and 
that  her  lover,  to  shield  her,  chivalrously  avowed  himself 
to  b«  their  author.  Here  is  a  pleasing  fiction  plentifully 
vouched  for,  which  we  should  like  to  accept.53  The 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         75 

facts,  however,  —  weeds  of  fact  will  persist  in  springing 
up  among  the  flowers  of  romance,  —  leave  no  ground  for 
doubt  as  to  the  authorship  of  the  first  and  most  offensive 
of  the  letters ;  while  those  same  dull  realities  make  short 
work  of  the  gallantry  which,  when  pressed,  merely  con- 
sisted in  acknowledging  that  authorship. 

Still  less  defensible  are  the  efforts  usually  made  to 
gloss  over  Lincoln's  conduct,  at  Shields's  expense.  The 
special  pleading  takes  a  wide  range  —  as  wide  as  the 
Mississippi  itself,  at  the  mile  crossing,  where,  according 
to  one  story,  the  challenged  party  had,  with  grotesque 
humor,  stipulated  that  the  duelists  should  stand  on  oppo- 
site banks  and  fight  with  broadswords.54  Somewhat  on 
this  order  is  the  effort  of  Dr.  Irelan  —  not  by  any  means 
a  through-thick-and-thin  eulogist  —  to  treat  the  affair  as 
one  of  Lincoln's  jokes.  Says  he :  — 

"  Mr.  Lincoln  was  absolutely  opposed  to  dueling,  and 
very  well  knew  from  the  first  that  there  would  be  no  duel 
in  this  case.  And  here  is  where  the  ridiculousness  of  the 
whole  thing  appears.  The  gory  Shields  and  his  friends 
overlooked  this  entirely.  The  cavalry  broadswords  were 
procured,  and  these  were  of  from  thirty-six  to  forty  inch 
blades ;  then,  under  Mr.  Lincoln's  requirement,  the  com- 
batants were  not  only  to  stand  the  length  of  the  two 
swords  apart,  but  also  six  feet  further,  thus  actually 
placing  them  at  least  twelve  feet  apart.  With  this  arrange- 
ment, the  most  they  could  have  done  would  have  been  to 
touch  the  points  of  their  swords,  if  Shields  could  have 
measured  half  of  that  distance  with  his  arm  and  sword. 
Lincoln  had  made  these  impossible  provisions  in  full  view 
of  this  funny  side  of  the  case.  Even  if  the  distance  be- 
tween the  men  had  not  been  so  preposterously  great,  the 
poor  Irishman  would  have  had  no  chance  without  crossing 
the  board,  which  would  have  forfeited  his  life,  while  the 
long  body  and  arm  of  Lincoln  might  have  rendered  his 
own  position  disagreeable.  Mr.  Lincoln's  conduct  in  this 
matter  was  deliberate  and  premeditated,  and  this  it  was 


76         LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

that  took  from  him  the  odium  of  stooping  to  the  savage 
and  unchristian  'code.'  With  him,  Mr.  Shields's  case 
began  in  fun,  and  ended  in  fun."  w 

A  glance  at  the  conditions,  however,  reveals  that  the 
distance  of  twelve  feet  mentioned  by  the  Doctor  was  not 
to  intervene  between  the  combatants,  but  was,  in  fact,  the 
length  of  the  ten  by  twelve  foot  oblong  within  which  the 
duelists,  separated  by  the  plank  "  on  edge  "  only,  were  to 
fight.  Dr.  Irelan's  misinterpretation  of  the  terms  is  shared 
by  the  historians  of  Illinois,  in  whose  opinion,  also,  the 
position  "  prescribed  for  the  combatants  on  the  field  looks 
a  good  deal  like  the  cropping  out  of  one  of  Lincoln's 
irrepressible  jokes  ;  as  if  both  were  placed  out  of  harm's 
way,  and  that  they  might  beat  the  air  with  their  trenchant 
blades  forever  and  not  come  within  damaging  reach  of 
each  other." 5<J 

The  fancy  for  separating  the  duelists  by  a  river,  or  even 
by  a  dozen  feet,  does  not,  of  course,  extend  to  all  the 
writers  who  laugh  at  poor  Shields  and  his  wrongs.  The 
quarrel,  in  the  eyes  of  one  biographer,  was  "  serio-comic  " ; 
another  terms  it  "  a  silly  fracas  " ;  while  a  third  dismisses 
it  as  "  certainly  a  boyish  affair  "  ;  still  another  thinks  that 
"  nothing  but  a  tragedy  could  have  prevented  its  being 
a  farce  " ;  a  recent  author  would  have  us  believe  that 
the  challenged  party  tried  to  avert  a  duel  "  by  proposing 
the  most  absurd  conditions  "  ;  and  Lincoln's  loyal  secre- 
taries, in  view  of  the  so-called  "  ludicrousness "  of  the 
incident,  devote  most  of  their  chapter  on  the  subject  to 
the  belittling  of  Shields,  without,  however,  increasing  the 
stature  of  their  hero.57  The  amusing  aspects  of  the  story, 
on  which  these  writers  lay  so  much  stress,  appear,  for  the 
most  part,  to  have  escaped  Lincoln's  own  usually  keen 
sense  of  humor.  He  had  realized,  early  in  the  progress  of 
the  broil,  that  he  was  on  the  wrong  side  of  it.  This  alone 
must  have  been  sufficient  to  sober  him.  At  all  events,  as 
we  have  seen,  he  treated  the  affair  seriously  enough,  and 
had  the  grace  to  be  ashamed  of  his  part  in  it  ever  after- 


LOVE,  WAR,  AND   POLITICS         77 

ward.  No  amount  of  laughter  at  Shields,  whatever  occa- 
sion that  volatile  gentleman  may  have  afforded,  relieves 
Lincoln  of  the  onus  which  attaches  to  his  attack  upon  the 
Auditor  and  to  his  acceptance  of  the  challenge. 

The  difficulty  with  Shields  constituted  Lincoln's  last 
personal  quarrel.  He  had  run  the  gamut  from  that  first 
schoolboy  fight  with  his  fists  to  the  preliminaries,  at  least, 
of  what  might  have  been  a  serious  duel ;  and  with  it  end 
our  chronicles  of  his  early  encounters.  Culled  from  the 
first  thirty-three  years  of  his  life,  they  have  been  strung 
together,  be  it  remembered,  on  the  single  thread  of  his 
masterful  nature.  Although  the  nobler,  gentler  traits 
have  been  thus  practically  disregarded,  it  would  be  man- 
ifest error  to  forget  that  they,  too,  entered  into  the  fash- 
ioning of  that  strangely  woven  character,  and  that  they 
became  stronger  and  deeper  as  the  man  developed.  In- 
deed, from  this  time  forth,  a  mellower  tone  pervades  his 
behavior.58  How  much  of  the  change  was  due  to  the  hu- 
miliation of  the  Shields  squabble,  to  Lincoln's  marriage 
with  Miss  Todd,  which  followed  it  by  but  a  few  weeks,  to 
the  requirements  of  a  higher  standing  in  his  profession 
and  in  political  circles,  cannot,  of  course,  be  determined. 
We  do  know,  however,  that  he  never  again  became 
involved  in  a  private  quarrel.  Holding  his  own  —  yes, 
more  than  holding  his  own  —  throughout  the  warmest  con- 
troversies and  fiercest  struggles  in  his  country's  history, 
he  is  destined,  as  we  shall  learn,  still  to  be  master  among 
men,  to  control  them  as  firmly  as  in  the  frontier  days  of 
Faustrecht,  and  withal,  so  gently,  that  they  do  not  know 
themselves  to  be  controlled.  Here  is  no  simple  achieve- 
ment, yet  it  took  the  President  but  a  moment  once,  and 
that  when  the  turmoil  was  at  its  height,  to  explain  the 
marvel,  in  part  at  least,  by  a  simple  formula.  It  was  ad- 
dressed to  a  young  officer,  who  had  been  court-martialed 
for  quarreling  with  one  of  his  fellows :  — 

"  The  advice  of  a  father  to  his  son,  '  Beware  of  en- 
trance to  a  quarrel,  but,  being  in,  bear 't  that  the  opposed 


78         LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

may  beware  of  thee,'  is  good,  but  not  the  best.  Quarrel 
not  at  all.  No  man,  resolved  to  make  the  most  of  himself, 
can  spare  time  for  personal  contention.  Still  less  can  he 
afford  to  take  all  the  consequences,  including  the  vitiating 
of  his  temper  and  the  loss  of  self-control.  Yield  larger 
things  to  which  you  can  show  no  more  than  equal  right ; 
and  yield  lesser  ones,  though  clearly  your  own.  Better  give 
your  path  to  a  dog  than  be  bitten  by  him  in  contesting 
for  the  right.  Even  killing  the  dog  would  not  cure  the 
bite."  w 

A  far  cry  this,  from  the  Lost  Townships  diatribe  and 
the  rendezvous  with  broadswords  on  Bloody  Island  ;  yet 
the  philosopher  of  1862  may  not,  for  all  that,  be  thought 
less  spirited  than  the  Hotspur  of  1842.  What  of  true 
metal  rang  in  the  deeds  of  earlier  times  was  not  wanting 
in  later  days,  though  its  form,  as  we  shall  see,  was  changed 
—  changed,  now  and  then,  almost  beyond  recognition ; 
for  it  became  tempered  and  purified,  in  the  fierce  heat  of 
a  fire  that  all  but  consumed  a  nation. 


CHAPTER  III 
GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE 

THE  early  encounters  and  controversies  of  Lincoln  were 
insignificant  when  compared  to  the  rivalry  that  existed, 
for  almost  twenty-five  years,  between  him  and  Stephen 
A.  Douglas.  First  as  enthusiastic  adherents  of  opposing 
parties,  and  later  as  acknowledged  leaders  of  those  par- 
ties, they  so  conducted  themselves  that  the  orbits  of  their 
political  ambitions  crossed  and  recrossed  each  other.  The 
star  of  Douglas  was  generally  in  the  ascendant.  He  be- 
came, successively,  State's  Attorney,  member  of  the  Illinois 
legislature,  Register  of  the  Land  Office  at  Springfield, 
Secretary  of  State  for  Illinois,  Judge  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  that  State,  member  of  Congress,  and  United 
States  Senator.  His  rival's  planet,  on  the  other  hand, 
showed,  during  that  same  period,  the  comparatively  mea- 
gre glory  of  four  terms  in  the  State  legislature  and  one 
in  the  Lower  House  of  Congress.  Yet  the  inferior  light, 
swinging  in  season  and  out,  across  the  pathway  of  the 
other,  became  steadily  brighter  in  the  reflected  rays  of 
the  larger  luminary,  until  suddenly  they  presented  a  sin- 
gular phenomenon.  The  lesser  became  the  greater,  for 
while  the  one  had  grown,  the  other  had  diminished ;  and 
the  rising  orb,  throwing  off  at  last  the  borrowed  beams, 
shone  by  its  own  intense  power  —  so  intense,  indeed,  that 
as  its  splendor  spread,  the  waning  star  went  out  in  total 
eclipse. 

The  political  careers  of  these  two  men  started  at 
about  the  same  time  and  place.  When  Lincoln  entered 
upon  his  first  term  in  the  Illinois  Assembly  at  Vandalia, 
he  met  in  the  lobby  a  shrewd  little  Vermonter,  four  years 


8o        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

his  junior,  who,  notwithstanding  extreme  youth  and  brief- 
ness of  residence  in  the  West,  was  conducting  among  the 
members  of  the  legislature  what  proved  to  be  a  successful 
canvass  for  the  office  of  State's  Attorney  for  the  first 
judicial  district.  The  newcomer  was  Stephen  A.  Douglas. 
Identifying  himself  with  the  dominant  party,  he  became 
as  pronounced  in  his  Democracy  as  Lincoln  was  in  his 
Whigism.  On  opposite  sides  of  the  next  Assembly, — 
both  of  them  were  elected  to  the  legislature  of  1836,  — 
they  clashed,  from  time  to  time,  in  tactics  and  debate. 
The  antagonism  thus  started  in  Vandalia  was  transferred 
the  following  year  to  Springfield,  where,  within  a  few 
months  of  each  other,  the  young  men  took  up  their  resi- 
dence. Here  differences  in  character  and  temperament, 
rather  than  in  party  affiliations,  acted  as  a  bar  to  the 
friendship,  or  even  to  the  esteem,  that  is  not  uncommon 
between  contending  politicians.  If  Douglas  took  one  side 
of  a  question,  Lincoln  might  safely  be  looked  for  on  the 
other;  and  their  rivalry  soon  became  a  recognized  factor 
in  the  spirited  local  contests  of  the  day. 

The  first  of  these  encounters  concerning  which  any 
details  have  been  preserved  took  place  during  "  the  hard- 
cider  campaign."  At  the  very  beginning  of  that  memo- 
rable contest,  one  night  in  December,  1839,  a  group  of 
disputatious  young  politicians  sat  around  the  stove  in 
Joshua  F.  Speed's  store.  The  argument,  which  is  said  to 
have  been  mainly  between  Lincoln  and  Douglas,  was  at  its 
warmest  when  the  latter  sprang  to  his  feet  and  said :  — 

"  Gentlemen,  this  is  no  place  to  talk  politics.  We  will 
discuss  the  questions  publicly  with  you." 

This  informal  challenge  was  followed  within  a  few  days 
by  a  resolution,  which  Lincoln  offered  in  a  meeting  of  the 
Whigs,  inviting  their  opponents  to  a  debate.  The  Demo- 
crats, accepting,  appointed  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  John 
Calhoun,  Josiah  Lamborn,  and  Jesse  B.  Thomas  to  meet 
Stephen  T.  Logan,  Edward  D.  Baker,  Orville  H.  Brown- 
ing, and  Abraham  Lincoln.  These  champions,  for  eight 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE          81 

evenings,  in  the  order  named,  defended  and  attacked  by 
turns  President  Van  Buren's  independent  treasury  pro- 
ject, with  an  occasional  tilt  over  the  other  economic  ques- 
tions on  which  their  respective  parties  differed.  "  The 
great  debate,"  as  it  was  called,  drew  large  audiences  at 
the  outset ;  but  by  the  time  Lincoln's  evening,  the  last  in 
the  series,  arrived,  the  attendance  had  considerably  dimin- 
ished. This  had  a  chilling  effect  upon  the  speaker,  yet  he 
warmed  up  sufficiently  to  make  what  was  considered  the 
best  address  of  all  —  so  good,  in  fact,  that  it  was  published 
as  a  campaign  document,  not  only  in  friend  Francis's 
newspaper,  but  also  in  pamphlet  form.1  A  glance  through 
the  speech  reveals  how  keenly,  at  that  time  already,  the 
"  Sangamon  Chief  "  was  on  the  trail  of  his  pet  antagonist. 
The  other  Democratic  speakers,  it  is  true,  were  mentioned 
here  and  there,  in  refutation ;  but  to  Douglas  fell  the 
severest,  and  by  far  the  largest  share  of  Lincoln's  atten- 
tion. Here  is  a  sample  paragraph :  — 

"  I  return  to  another  of  Mr.  Douglas's  excuses  for  the 
expenditures  of  1838,  at  the  same  time  announcing  the 
pleasing  intelligence  that  this  is  the  last  one.  He  says 
that  ten  millions  of  that  year's  expenditure  was  a  contin- 
gent appropriation,  to  prosecute  an  anticipated  war  with 
Great  Britain  on  the  Maine  boundary  question.  Few 
words  will  settle  this.  First,  that  the  ten  millions  appro- 
priated was  not  made  till  1839,  and  consequently  could 
not  have  been  expended  in  1838  ;  second,  although  it  was 
appropriated,  it  has  never  been  expended  at  all.  Those 
who  heard  Mr.  Douglas  recollect  that  he  indulged  himself 
in  a  contemptuous  expression  of  pity  for  me.  *  Now  he  'fc 
got  me,'  thought  I.  But  when  he  went  on  to  say  that  five 
millions  of  the  expenditure  of  1838  were  payments  ot 
the  French  indemnities,  which  I  knew  to  be  untrue ;  that" 
five  millions  had  been  for  the  Post-office,  which  I  knew 
to  be  untrue ;  that  ten  millions  had  been  for  the  Maine 
boundary  war,  which  I  not  only  knew  to  be  untrue,  but 
supremely  ridiculous  also ;  and  when  I  saw  that  he  wa3 


82         LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

stupid  enough  to  hope  that  I  would  permit  such  ground- 
less and  audacious  assertions  to  go  unexposed,  —  I  readily 
consented  that,  on  the  score  both  of  veracity  and  sagacity, 
the  audience  should  judge  whether  he  or  I  were  the  more 
deserving  of  the  world's  contempt." 2 

This  utterance  was  significant.  Like  the  leading  motive 
in  the  overture  to  a  music-drama,  it  struck,  at  the  very 
beginning  of  the  Lincoln-Douglas  struggle,  a  note  that 
was  destined  to  run  through  many  similar  scenes,  in  which 
these  two  were  to  be  the  principal  actors. 

During  the  canvass  that  followed  the  debate,  Lincoln 
and  Douglas  stumped  the  State  in  the  interests  of  their 
respective  candidates,  with  equal  enthusiasm.3  Collisions 
between  them  were  frequent,  for  the  bearer  of  the  Whig 
standard  lost  no  opportunity  of  speaking  from  the  same 
platform  with  the  Democratic  orator.  In  one  of  these 
debates,  Lincoln  charged  Van  Buren  with  having  voted 
at  the  New  York  State  Constitutional  Convention  of 
1821,  for  negro  suffrage  with  a  property  qualification. 
This  Douglas  denied.  Whereupon,  Lincoln,  to  prove  his 
assertion,  read,  from  Holland's  Life  of  Van  Buren,  the 
Wizard  of  Kinderhook's  own  statement  that  he  had  so 
voted.  Thus  neatly  cornered,  "Douglas  got  mad,"  as  the 
story  goes,  and  jumped  up  to  dispose  of  both  the  charge 
and  the  evidence,  in  characteristic  fashion.  Snatching 
the  volume  from  the  reader's  hand,  he  exclaimed,  "  Damn 
such  a  book!"  and  hurled  it  among  the  audience.4  In 
another  of  their  encounters,  Douglas  had  no  occasion  for 
so  desperate  a  defence.  On  the  contrary,  he  forced  the 
fighting  too  ably  for  his  antagonist.  "  Lincoln,"  says  a 
friend  of  those  days,  "  did  not  come  up  to  the  require- 
ments of  the  occasion.  He  was  conscious  of  his  failure, 
and  I  never  saw  any  man  so  much  distressed.  He  begged 
to  be  permitted  to  try  it  again,  and  was  reluctantly  in- 
dulged ;  and  in  the  next  effort  he  transcended  our  highest 
expectations.  I  never  heard,  and  never  expect  to  hear, 
such  a  triumphant  vindication  as  he  then  gave  of  Whig 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE          83 

measures  or  policy." 5  But  the  victory  of  the  canvass,  so 
far  as  it  concerned  our  two  young  campaigners,  rested 
with  Douglas.  His  opponent,  it  is  true,  was  elected  to  the 
Assembly  ;  yet  the  five  electoral  votes  of  Illinois,  the  real 
prize  of  the  contest,  remained  in  the  Democratic  column. 

The  next  important  conflict  between  the  rivals  was 
in  a  widely  different  field  —  as  different,  indeed,  as  hearts 
are  from  ballots.  Yet  love  and  politics  —  witness  the 
Shields  affair  —  were  not  so  far  apart  as  they  might  have 
been,  in  the  Springfield  of  1840.  At  that  time,  Miss 
Mary  Todd,  pretty,  talented,  and  vivacious,  had  recently 
come  from  her  Kentucky  home  to  live  with  her  sister, 
Mrs.  Ninian  W.  Edwards.  The  hospitalities  of  the  house 
were  naturally  extended  by  Mr.  Edwards,  one  of  the 
"  Long  Nine,"  to  the  leader  of  his  delegation,  so  that 
Lincoln  was  a  frequent  visitor.  He  paid  court  to  the  fas- 
cinating little  woman  from  his  native  State,  and  speedily 
became  her  accepted  suitor.  Lincoln's  success,  no  less 
than  the  lady's  charms,  fanned  the  spirit  of  contention 
that  already  existed  between  him  and  Douglas.  The  little 
Vermonter,  dashing  and  comely,  followed  his  ungainly  an- 
tagonist into  the  lists  to  dispute  with  him,  as  vigorously 
as  in  their  political  contests,  the  possession  of  this  precious 
trophy.  How  the  fight  was  conducted  cannot  —  unfortu- 
nately for  the  romance  of  it  —  be  told  with  the  exactness 
of  detail  that  usually  makes  such  episodes  entertaining. 
Says  one  old  resident  of  Springfield  :  — 

"  As  a  society  man,  Douglas  was  infinitely  more  accom- 
plished, more  attractive,  and  influential  than  Lincoln ; 
and  that  he  should  supplant  the  latter  in  the  affections  of 
the  proud  and  aristocratic  Miss  Todd  is  not  to  be  mar- 
veled at.  He  was  unremitting  in  his  attentions  to  the 
lady,  promenaded  the  streets  arm-in-arm  with  her  —  fre- 
quently passing  Lincoln  —  and,  in  every  way,  made  plain 
his  intention  to  become  the  latter's  rival." 

This  was  merely  —  so  some  said  —  a  flirtation  on  the 
part  of  Miss  Todd  to  tease  her  lover.  Others  went  so  far 


84        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

as  to  say  that  Douglas  made  a  proposal  of  marriage  and 
was  refused,  "  on  account  of  his  bad  morals."  Accord- 
ing to  still  another  account,  she  grew  to  prefer  him,  and 
would  have  accepted  his  offer  if  she  had  not  given  her 
promise  to  Lincoln.  "  The  unfortunate  attitude  she  felc 
bound  to  maintain  between  these  two  young  men,"  relates 
the  writer  of  this  version,  "  ended  in  a  spell  of  sickness. 
Douglas,  still  hopeful,  was  warm  in  the  race ;  but  the 
lady's  physician,  her  brother-in-law,  Dr.  William  Wallace, 
to  whom  she  confided  the  real  cause  of  her  illness,  saw 
Douglas  and  induced  him  to  end  his  pursuit,  which  he  did 
with  great  reluctance."  So  much  for  the  doubtful  inci- 
dents of  the  contest ;  but  what  of  the  result  ?  Douglas 
withdrew,  and  Lincoln,  after  an  otherwise  not  untroubled 
courtship,  led  Miss  Todd  to  the  altar.6 

The  private  passage  of  arms  between  our  politicians 
did  not,  of  course,  lessen  their  public  antagonism.  Yet, 
during  the  decade  following  the  marriage,  they  had,  it 
appears,  no  noteworthy  encounters.  This  may  have  been 
due,  in  part  at  least,  to  the  fact  that  Lincoln,  diligently 
practicing  his  profession,  found  less  time  than  previously 
for  politics.  He  did,  it  is  true,  participate  in  conventions 
and  campaigns  —  even  emerging  into  public  life,  in  1847, 
for  one  term  in  Congress ;  but  there  is  no  evidence  that 
these  activities  brought  him  into  personal  conflict  with 
his  brilliant  adversary.  Moreover,  the  uninterrupted  rise 
of  Douglas,  during  this  same  period,  from  the  Illinois 
Supreme  Court  Bench  to  Congress,  and  thence  to  the 
United  States  Senate,  carried  him  somewhat  out  of  Lin- 
coln's range.  As  the  latter  took  his  seat  in  the  Lower 
House,  the  former  entered  upon  his  career  in  the  Upper. 
The  one,  at  the  expiration  of  his  term,  returned  to  Spring- 
field and  the  small-fry  litigation  of  the  Eighth  Circuit, 
without  having  achieved  distinction ;  the  other  soon  be- 
came a  figure  of  national  importance. 

Each  success  of  the  man  whom  he  regarded  as  his 
particular  rival  added  a  pang  to  the  ex-member's  dis- 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND   LITTLE          85 

appointment.  The  trophy  of  Miltiades  would  not  let  The- 
mistocles  sleep ;  and  Lincoln,  though  he  had  come  to  look 
upon  political  affairs  with  comparative  indifference,  could 
not  take  his  eyes  off  Douglas.  So  it  happened  that  dur- 
ing the  presidential  canvass  of  1852,  when  the  Senator 
opened  his  stumping  tour  of  the  States,  at  Richmond,  in  a 
speech  that  was  extensively  republished,  Lincoln  obtained 
permission  from  the  Scott  Club  of  Springfield  to  deliver 
an  answer,  under  its  auspices.7  The  effort  was  not  credit- 
able. Depressed  by  the  hopelessness  of  the  Whig  cause 
in  Illinois,  and  carried  away  by  his  jealousy  of  Douglas, 
he  descended  to  a  tone  unworthy  of  himself  or  of  the 
occasion.  Referring  to  the  Richmond  address,  he  said :  — • 

"  This  speech  has  been  published  with  high  commen- 
dations in  at  least  one  of  the  Democratic  papers  in  this 
State,  and  I  suppose  it  has  been  and  will  be  in  most  of 
the  others.  When  I  first  saw  it  and  read  it,  I  was  re- 
minded of  old  times,  when  Judge  Douglas  was  not  so 
much  greater  man  than  all  the  rest  of  us,  as  he  is  now,  — 
of  the  Harrison  campaign  twelve  years  ago,  when  I  used 
to  hear  and  try  to  answer  many  of  his  speeches ;  and 
believing  that  the  Richmond  speech,  though  marked  with 
the  same  species  of  '  shirks  and  quirks '  as  the  old  ones, 
was  not  marked  with  any  greater  ability,  —  I  was  seized 
with  a  strange  inclination  to  attempt  an  answer  to  it; 
and  this  inclination  it  was  that  prompted  me  to  seek  the 
privilege  of  addressing  you  on  this  occasion."  8 

Like  the  speaker's  one  failure  during  that  very  Harri- 
son campaign,  this  defeat  —  as  his  friends  regarded  it  — 
in  the  Pierce-Scott  contest  was  destined  to  be  followed 
by  brilliant  victories.  But  not  at  once,  for  Douglas  was 
still  rising  toward  the  zenith  of  his  power,  and  Lincoln's 
hour  had  not  yet  struck. 

The  "  Little  Giant,"  as  the  admirers  of  the  Senator 
from  Illinois  fondly  called  him,  had  been  a  candidate,  at 
Baltimore,  for  the  Democratic  nomination  to  the  presi- 
dency, which  had  fallen,  by  way  of  compromise,  to  Frank- 


86        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

lin  Pierce.  That  gentleman  owed  his  selection  largely  to 
the  bitterness  of  the  struggle  between  the  "  Old  Fogies," 
under  such  favorites  as  Cass,  Marcy,  and  Buchanan,  on 
the  one  hand,  and  "Young  America,"  championed  by 
Douglas,  on  the  other.  The  youthful  leader,  though  he 
had  not  himself  attained  the  prize,  had  been  strong 
enough  to  keep  his  powerful  competitors  from  getting 
it.  Here  was  glory  enough  for  a  first  attempt,  and 
Douglas  emerged  from  the  Convention  still  on  the  high- 
road to  the  White  House.  That  road  had,  for  many  years, 
wound  through  the  Southern  States.  It  was  dotted  with 
the  headstones  of  presidential  aspirants,  who  had  fallen 
beneath  the  slaveholder's  whip;  but  surely  this  adroit 
politician,  stepping  off  so  firmly,  would  not  fall.  He  ad- 
vanced steadily  enough  while  the  growing  differences 
between  North  and  South  could  be  turned  into  the  prim- 
rote  paths  of  compromise.  Not  only  had  the  measures  that 
secured  the  so-called  Compromise  of  1850  his  support,  but 
he  had,  at  the  same  time,  solemnly  reaffirmed  the  great 
Missouri  Compromise  itself.  "It  had  its  origin,"  said  he, 
**in  the  hearts  of  all  patriotic  men,  who  desired  to  pre- 
serve and  perpetuate  the  blessings  of  our  glorious  Union 
—  an  origin  akin  to  that  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  conceived  in  the  same  spirit  of  fraternal  affection, 
and  calculated  to  remove  forever  the  danger  which  seemed 
to  threaten,  at  some  distant  day,  to  sever  the  social  bond 
of  union.  All  the  evidences  of  public  opinion,  at  that  day, 
seemed  to  indicate  that  this  Compromise  had  been  canon- 
ized in  the  hearts  of  the  American  people,  as  a  sacred  thing 
which  no  ruthless  hand  would  ever  be  reckless  enough  to 
disturb." 9  Yet,  within  somewhat  over  four  years,  the 
speaker  himself,  of  all  men  in  the  world,  was  guilty  of 
that  sacrilege.10  At  the  command  of  the  South,  his  own 
hand  violated  the  hallowed  instrument.  The  Compromise 
had  served  its  turn  —  at  least  for  the  Slave  States.  Having 
enjoyed  the  benefits  allotted  to  them  by  the  compact,  they 
viewed  with  alarm  the  prospect  that  the  Free  States  were 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE          87 

about  to  come  into  their  share  of  it.  This  was  to  be  pre- 
vented at  all  hazards.  The  lash  cracked  above  the  head 
of  Douglas.  He  promptly  responded,  in  his  Kansas- 
Nebraska  Bill,  with  the  fateful  amendment  which  declared 
the  slavery  restrictions  of  the  Compromise  "inoperative 
and  void." 

The  storm  of  indignation,  aroused  in  the  North  by  the 
passage  of  the  bill,  swept  its  author  home  in  the  autumn 
of  1854  to  defend  himself  before  his  constituents.11  The 
people  of  Chicago,  whom  he  first  tried  to  address,  gath- 
ered in  an  angry  multitude  and  refused  to  hear  him ;  a 
but  elsewhere  throughout  the  State,  in  the  so-called  Anti- 
Nebraska  as  well  as  in  the  Nebraska  districts,  his  popu- 
larity secured  to  him  large  and  respectful  audiences. 
This  tour  was  ostensibly  in  the  interests  of  the  party's 
State  and  Congressional  tickets.  In  reality,  however,  it 
involved  a  strenuous  bid  for  the  endorsement  of  Douglas 
himself.  His  colleague,  General  Shields,  who  had  sup- 
ported him  in  the  Senate,  was  to  stand  for  reelection 
before  the  next  legislature.  Hence  the  votes  about  to  be 
cast,  particularly  those  for  members  of  that  body,  would 
afford  the  best  immediate  test  as  to  whether  or  not  he  of 
the  "  ruthless  hand  "  was  sustained  by  the  people. 

With  all  his  wonted  skill  and  energy,  Douglas  threw 
himself  into  the  struggle.  Improving  the  opportunity 
offered  by  the  large  gathering  of  voters  and  politicians,  at 
the  State  Agricultural  Fair,  iu  Springfield,  he  presented 
himself  at  the  capitol,  on  the  opening  day,  and  made  a 
speech.  Like  most  of  his  utterances,  it  was  specious  but 
attractive.  To  answer  it  effectually  would  require  ability  of 
no  mean  order,  and,  as  if  by  common  consent  of  the  several 
Anti-Nebraska  elements,  the  task  was  assigned  to  his  old 
antagonist,  Abraham  Lincoln.  This  selection  appears,  in 
fact,  to  have  been  made  before  Douglas  had  spoken.  "  I 
will  mention,"  said  the  Senator  in  his  opening  remarks  to 
the  audience  which  crowded  the  hall  of  the  State  House, 
"  that  it  is  understood  by  some  gentlemen  that  Mr.  Lin/ 


88         LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

coin,  of  this  city,  is  expected  to  answer  me.  If  this  is  the 
understanding,  I  wish  that  Mr.  Lincoln  would  step  for- 
ward and  let  us  arrange  some  plan  upon  which  to  carry 
out  this  discussion."  1S  Mr.  Lincoln,  as  he  happened  to 
be  absent  at  the  moment,  did  not  step  forward  then ;  but, 
on  the  following  day,  in  the  same  place  and  before  an 
equally  large  assemblage,  he  took  a  step  forward  that  must 
have  galled  the  great  man's  kibe.  Aroused  by  the  moral, 
no  less  than  by  the  political  obliquity  of  Douglas's  course, 
Lincoln  arose  above  the  petty  personalities  which  had  dis- 
figured his  Scott  Club  address,  and  delivered  a  speech  that 
evoked  the  praise  of  even  the  Senator's  supporters.  Doug- 
las himself,  as  his  frequent  interruptions  of  the  speaker 
indicated,  was  greatly  disconcerted  by  the  unexpected 
sweep  and  strength  of  the  reply.  Moreover,  in  his  excite- 
ment and  anger,  the  two  hours  before  supper-time  left 
to  him  for  rejoinder  were  occupied  to  so  little  purpose 
that  he  closed  with  a  promise  to  resume  in  the  evening. 
Evening  came  and  so  did  the  audience,  but  not  the  "  Little 
Giant."  Whether  he  had  tumbled  into  one  of  the  seven- 
league  boots  that  was  putting  a  comfortable  distance  be- 
tween him  and  the  big  giant,  contemporary  history  saith 
not.  It  does  relate  that  when  he  failed  to  return,  his  dis- 
appointed auditors  drew  the  inevitable  conclusion  —  and 
so  may  we." 

That  the  Senator  should  retrieve,  unopposed,  in  other 
parts  of  the  State,  the  ground  he  had  lost  in  Springfield, 
was  of  course  not  on  the  program  of  the  Anti-Nebraska 
leaders.  They  urged  Lincoln  to  follow  Douglas  until, 
as  one  of  them  expressed  it,  he  "  ran  him  into  a  hole  or 
made  him  halloo, '  Enough ! ' '  Their  champion  was  eager 
enough  for  pursuit,  but  to  the  "  Little  Giant,"  the  pros- 
pect of  continuing  the  combat  had  "  no  relish  of  salvation 
in  't."  Douglas  was  cordial  to  his  opponent  when  they 
met,  a  few  days  later,  in  Bloomington ;  but  as  soon  as 
further  debates  were  suggested,  he  became  greatly  irri- 
tated. "  It  looks  to  me,"  said  he  to  Jesse  W.  Fell,  who 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE          89 

had  made  the  proposition,  "  like  dogging  a  man  all  over 
the  State.  If  Mr.  Lincoln  wants  to  make  a  speech,  he 
had  better  get  a  crowd  of  his  own ;  for  I  most  respectfully 
decline  to  hold  a  discussion  with  him."  15  To  persist  in 
this  refusal,  among  a  people  whose  rude  sense  of  chivalry 
still  delighted  in  the  test  of  man  to  man,  would  have  cost 
Douglas  much  of  his  hard-earned  prestige.  So  we  find 
him,  twelve  days  after  the  Springfield  debate,  again  shar- 
ing the  platform  with  Lincoln  —  this  time,  in  Peoria. 
Here,  as  at  the  Capital,  the  Whig's  ambition  to  address 
large  audiences  —  we  say  nothing  of  his  confidence  in  his 
powers  —  led  him  to  be  content  with  one  speech,  while 
the  Democrat  had  two,  the  opening  and  the  close.  Con- 
cerning this  arrangement  Lincoln  quaintly  said  in  his 
introduction :  — 

"  I  doubt  not  but  you  have  been  a  little  surprised  to 
learn  that  I  have  consented  to  give  one  of  his  high  reputa- 
tion and  known  ability  this  advantage  of  me.  Indeed,  my 
consenting  to  it,  though  reluctant,  was  not  wholly  unself- 
ish, for  I  suspected,  if  it  were  understood  that  the  Judge 
was  entirely  done,  you  Democrats  would  leave  and  not 
hear  me  ;  but  by  giving  him  the  close,  I  felt  confident 
you  would  stay  for  the  fun  of  hearing  him  skin  me." 16 

But  it  proved,  as  they  say  in  the  East,  to  be  "the  other 
way  round."  Douglas  got  the  flaying,  and  no  one  realized 
this  more  keenly  than  he  himself.  Going  to  his  antago- 
nist, after  the  meeting,  —  so  one  story  runs,  —  he  said  : 

"Lincoln,  you  understand  this  question  of  prohibiting 
slavery  in  the  Territories  better  than  all  the  opposition  in 
the  Senate  of  the  United  States.  I  cannot  make  anything 
by  debating  it  with  you.  You,  Lincoln,  have  here  and  at 
Springfield  given  me  more  trouble  than  all  the  opposition 
in  the  Senate  combined."  " 

Then,  throwing  himself  upon  the  other's  magnanimity, 
he  begged  him  to  discontinue  the  pursuit.  According  to 
another  tale,  Douglas  made  a  feigned  illness  the  ground 
for  his  request.18  At  all  events,  the  Senator's  discomfiture, 


90        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

whether  mental  or  physical,  disarmed  Lincoln.  He  granted 
the  truce  proposed  by  Douglas  —  both  to  abandon  the  field 
and  to  return  to  their  respective  homes.  Accordingly, 
when,  on  the  following  day,  they  arrived  at  Lacon,  where 
the  next  debate  was  to  take  place,  Douglas  excused  him- 
self from  speaking,  on  the  ground  of  hoarseness,  and  Lin- 
coln declined  to  take  advantage  of  his  "indisposition." 
Thereupon,  they  separated,  Lincoln  going  directly  home, 
as  had  been  agreed  ;  but  Douglas  stopped  at  Princeton, 
where  a  chance  meeting  with  Owen  Lovejoy  betrayed  him 
into  a  violation  of  the  compact.19  This  breach  of  faith 
should  be  borne  in  mind  by  him  who  would  comprehend 
the  characters  of  these  adversaries;  yet  the  little  great 
man  in  retreat  and  crying,  "  Hold,  enough  !  "  while  the  big 
one  stays  his  hand,  is  a  still  more  significant  spectacle. 

The  election  that  ensued  was  virtually  a  defeat  for 
Douglas.20  He  beheld  the  majority  by  which  he  had  twice 
been  sent  to  the  United  States  Senate  crumble  away  ;  and 
when,  during  the  following  winter,  the  new  legislature 
met  in  joint  session  to  elect  General  Shields's  successor, 
the  choice  lay  in  the  hands  of  the  Anti-Nebraska  members. 
Their  favorite,  consistently  enough,  was  Lincoln.21  The 
champion  who  had  so  neatly  unhorsed  the  Nebraska  man, 
himself,  on  the  local  field,  should  have  been  granted  his 
desire  —  so  thought  most  of  them  —  to  continue  the  fight, 
in  the  national  arena.  Five  of  their  number,  however,  as 
pronounced  in  their  Democracy  as  in  their  opposition  to 
Douglas,  could  not  bring  themselves  to  vote  for  a  Whig. 
They  supported  Lyman  Trumbull,  while  the  Douglas  Dem- 
ocrats voted  first  for  Shields  and  then  for  Governor  Joel 
A.  Matteson.22  After  a  number  of  ballots  with  varying 
but  indecisive  results,  when  Matteson's  election  became 
imminent,  Lincoln  directed  his  followers  to  unite  upon 
Trumbull,  who  thus  won  the  day.  The  new  Senator, 
though  in  times  gone  by  a  political  opponent  of  the  Whig 
leader,  now  agreed  with  him  in  uncompromising  antago- 
nism toward  Douglas  and  his  Kansas-Nebraska  legislation. 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE          91 

That  was  enough  for  Lincoln.  If  he  himself  might  not 
follow  Douglas  into  the  Senate,  the  keen  edge  of  his  dis- 
appointment was  tempered  by  the  consolation  of  sending, 
in  his  stead,  a  David  who  was  even  less  welcome  than  he 
to  the  diminutive  Goliath.23  Indeed,  no  sooner  had  the 
brilliant  Trumbull  taken  his  seat  than  he  opened  the  at- 
tack that  gave  Douglas  so  much  trouble ;  and  throughout 
the  stormy  sessions  which  followed,  the  senior  Senator 
from  Illinois  was  sure  to  find  his  colleague  in  the  van  of 
his  enemies  —  a  constant  reminder  of  that  other  inveterate 
opponent  at  home. 

Busy  as  Lincoln  was  at  the  bar  during  the  next  few 
years,  no  move  of  the  Democratic  leader  escaped  his 
attention.  When  Douglas,  still  bidding  for  the  presiden- 
tial nomination  that  had  twice  slipped  through  his  fin- 
gers, cast  a  defence  of  the  Dred  Scott  decision  into  the 
southern  scale  beside  the  repeal  of  the  Compromise, 
the  speech  did  not  long  remain  unanswered  by  his  vigilant 
critic.  Both  addresses  were  made  in  Springfield,  during 
June,  1857.  At  the  time,  the  Senator's  term  had  almost 
two  years  still  to  run,  yet  Lincoln's  fancy  appears  to  have 
carried  him  for  a  moment  away  from  the  important  issues 
under  discussion 24  to  the  day  when  Douglas  could  again 
be  brought  to  book.  Said  he :  — 

"  Three  years  and  a  half  ago,  Judge  Douglas  brought 
forward  his  famous  Nebraska  Bill.  The  country  was  at 
once  in  a  blaze.  He  scorned  all  opposition,  and  carried  it 
through  Congress.  Since  then  he  has  seen  himself  super- 
seded in  a  presidential  nomination  by  one  indorsing  the 
general  doctrine  of  his  measure,  but  at  the  same  time  stand- 
ing clear  of  the  odium  of  its  untimely  agitation  and  its  gross 
breach  of  national  faith ;  and  he  has  seen  that  successful 
rival  constitutionally  elected,  not  by  the  strength  of  friends, 
but  by  the  division  of  adversaries,  being  in  a  popular 
minority  of  nearly  four  hundred  thousand  votes.25  He  has 
seen  his  chief  aids  in  his  own  State,  Shields  and  Richard- 
sou,  politically  speaking,  successively  tried,  convicted,  and 


92        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

executed  for  an  offence  not  their  own,  but  his.28  And  now 
he  sees  his  own  case  standing  next  on  the  docket  for 
trial."27 

The  speaker  might  have  added  that  when  the  trial  took 
place,  he  hoped  to  conduct  the  prosecution. 

Douglas  gauged  the  full  measure  of  his  peril.  He 
needed  no  Lincoln  to  point  out  that  the  Democracy  of 
Illinois  would  not  follow  even  his  lead  into  the  slave- 
holders' camp.  And,  if  he  should  fail  to  carry  his  own 
State,  what  support  could  he  expect  from  his  party 
throughout  the  nation  ?  At  the  same  time,  that  party,  or 
rather  the  dominating  faction  thereof,  was  committing  it- 
self more  unreservedly,  at  every  step,  to  the  slavery  cause. 
In  this  dilemma,  Douglas  seized  the  horn  that  presented 
itself  first.  He  determined  to  preserve,  above  all  things, 
his  leadership  at  home,  and,  thus  strengthened,  to  maintain 
it  thereafter,  as  best  he  might,  abroad.  To  accomplish  the 
one  purpose,  without  entirely  losing  sight  of  the  other, 
he  devised  a  straddle  —  "  the  great  principle,"  as  he  called 
it,  "  of  popular  sovereignty."  According  to  this  doctrine, 
the  people  of  a  State  or  a  Territory  were  free  to  have 
slavery  or  not  as  they  might  choose.  Of  course  such  a 
choice,  so  far  as  it  would  operate  to  exclude  slavery  from 
the  Territories,  was  virtually  barred  by  the  Dred  Scott 
decision,  of  which  Douglas  had  warmly  approved  ;  but  the 
inconsistency  of  his  attitude  gave  him  no  concern,  as  long 
as  it  left  him,  like  Hosea  Biglow's  "  satty's  factory  "  can- 
didate, "  frontin'  South  by  North."  That  is  to  say,  fairly 
on  the  track  to  the  Senate,  in  1858,  and  not  turned  too 
far  away  from  the  road  that  might  lead  to  the  White 
House,  in  1860.  When,  in  the  winter  of  1857—58,  however, 
President  Buchanan  and  other  Democratic  leaders  sought 
to  obtain  the  admission  of  Kansas  into  the  Union,  with  a 
pro-slavery  constitution  that  had  not  been  properly  sub- 
mitted to  the  people  of  the  Territory,  Douglas  found  him- 
self at  the  parting  of  the  ways.  Support  of  the  scheme 
involved  the  surrender  of  "  popular  sovereignty,"  and  his 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE          93 

political  ruin  in  Illinois,  as  well  as  in  the  other  Northern 
States ;  opposition  to  it  threatened  similar  disaster  for 
his  hopes  in  the  South.  With  prompt  decision,  he  took 
his  stand  against  the  President.  Whereupon  ensued  the 
bitter  struggle  over  Kansas  that  for  a  brief  hour  revealed 
Douglas  at  his  best.  To  tell  how  brilliantly  he  fought  in 
the  Senate,  for  "  the  great  principle,"  how  manfully  he 
bore  himself  under  the  heavy  hand  of  the  administration, 
how  courageously  he  braved  the  abuse  of  old  friends, 
and  with  what  dignity  he  received  the  praise  of  lifelong 
enemies,  would  take  us  off  the  line  of  our  narrative.  Yet 
all  this  came  near  to  having  an  important  bearing  on  the 
fortunes  of  that  particular  enemy  with  whom  we  are  most 
concerned. 

Lincoln,  as  election  time  drew  near,  saw  with  chagrin 
not  only  that  Douglas  had  recovered  his  popularity  among 
northern  Democrats,  but  that  some  of  the  most  influential 
of  the  Republicans,  also,  began  to  regard  him  with  favor. 
Such  leaders  of  the  new  party  as  Greeley,  Bowles,  Wilson, 
Colfax,  Banks,  Burlingame,  and  Blair,  dazzled  by  the 
hope  of  gaining  so  powerful  an  ally,  counseled  the  Illinois 
Republicans  to  unite  with  the  Douglas  Democrats  in 
returning  him  to  the  Senate.28  This  alliance  would  have 
committed  the  anti-slavery  cause,  in  an  important  State, 
to  the  keeping  of  a  politician  who,  to  use  his  own  phrase, 
cared  not  whether  slavery  was  "  voted  down  or  voted  up," 
and  whose  entire  career,  notwithstanding  his  course  in 
the  Kansas  affair,  should  have  rendered  him  an  object  of 
distrust  to  the  Republican  Party.20  Its  aid  of  Douglas, 
moreover,  at  the  time,  would  have  involved  the  gross 
betrayal  of  its  own  local  leader ;  for  Lincoln's  sacrifices 
—  to  say  nothing  of  his  ability  and  his  services  —  entitled 
his  candidacy  to  the  undivided  support  of  his  party.  That 
this  support  should,  even  for  a  moment,  be  disputed  with 
him  by  one  against  whom  he  and  most  of  his  followers  had, 
all  their  lives,  been  arrayed,  is  its  own  commentary  on  the 
adroitness  of  Douglas.30  So  real  seemed  the  danger  that 


94 

Lincoln  became  greatly  troubled.  He  was  particularly  dis- 
turbed over  the  course  pursued  by  the  editor  of  the  New 
York  Tribune.  "  I  think  Greeley,"  said  he  to  his  partner, 
Mr.  Herndon,  "is  not  doing  me  right.  His  conduct,  I 
believe,  savors  a  little  of  injustice.  I  am  a  true  Republi- 
can and  have  been  tried  already  in  the  hottest  part  of  the 
anti-slavery  fight,  and  yet  I  find  him  taking  up  Douglas, 
a  veritable  dodger,  —  once  a  tool  of  the  South,  now  its 
enemy,  —  and  pushing  him  to  the  front.  He  forgets  that 
when  he  does  that  he  pulls  me  down  at  the  same  time. 
I  fear  Greeley's  attitude  will  damage  me  with  Sumner, 
Seward,  Wilson,  Phillips,  and  other  friends  in  the  East." 31 
Thereupon  the  faithful  Herndon  hastily  journeyed  toward 
the  seaboard  to  reclaim  the  wise  men  of  the  East  from 
following  a  misleading  star.  His  mission  was  not  entirely 
successful,  for  he  found  some  of  them  wandering  in  a  haze 
of  expediency  which  all  his  earnest  pleas  in  behalf  of  prin- 
ciple failed  to  dispel.  Meanwhile,  however,  the  atmosphere 
was  clearing  at  home.  Illinois  Republicans  could  not  bring 
themselves  to  "  place  any  reliance,"  as  Seward  expressed 
it,  "on  a  man  so  slippery  as  Douglas,"  and  when  their 
State  Convention  met  at  Springfield,  on  the  16th  of  June, 
1858,  they  formally  declared  for  the  man  on  whom  they 
could  rely.  Amidst  great  enthusiasm,  and  without  a  dis- 
senting voice,  was  passed  the  resolution  :  — 

"  That  Hon.  Abraham  Lincoln  is  our  first  and  only 
choice  for  United  States  Senator  to  fill  the  vacancy  about 
to  be  created  by  the  expiration  of  Mr.  Douglas's  term  of 
office."32 

As  Douglas  had,  with  equal  unanimity,  been  endorsed, 
though  not  actually  nominated,  eight  weeks  before,  by  the 
Democratic  Convention,  the  two  men  now,  for  the  first 
time  in  the  course  of  their  long  rivalry,  faced  each  other 
to  do  battle  for  the  same  high  office. 

With  characteristic  eagerness,  Lincoln  lost  no  time 
in  beginning  the  contest.  The  evening  of  the  day  on 
which  his  nomination  had  been  made,  he  addressed  the 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE          95 

Convention  in  the  speech  which  has  since  become  famous 
because  of  its  radical  development  of  the  text,  "  A  house 
divided  against  itself  cannot  stand."  But  what  at  this 
moment  interests  us  more  than  the  issues  under  discussion 
is  the  fact  that  the  speaker  devoted  most  of  his  attention 
to  his  opponent,  in  person.  Douglas  subservient  to  the 
slave-owners,  or  Douglas  in  revolt  against  them,  was  pic- 
tured alike  unworthy  of  northern  confidence.  Moreover, 
his  recently  acquired  popularity  among  the  Republicans, 
though  it  had  signally  failed  to  influence  the  Convention, 
appears  still  to  have  worried  Lincoln.  "  There  are  those," 
said  he,  after  speaking  of  the  party's  ambition  to  over- 
throw the  southern  regime,  "  who  denounce  us  openly  to 
their  own  friends,  and  yet  whisper  us  softly  that  Senator 
Douglas  is  the  aptest  instrument  there  is  with  which 
to  effect  that  object.  They  wish  us  to  infer  all  from  the 
fact  that  he  now  has  a  little  quarrel  with  the  present  head 
of  the  dynasty,  and  that  he  has  regularly  voted  with  us 
on  a  single  point  upon  which  he  and  we  have  never  dif- 
fered. They  remind  us  that  he  is  a  great  man,  and  that 
the  largest  of  us  are  very  small  ones.  Let  this  be  granted. 
But  'a  living  dog  is  better  than  a  dead  lion.'  Judge 
Douglas,  if  not  a  dead  lion  for  this  work,  is  at  least  a 
caged  and  toothless  one."  ** 

A  lion,  indeed,  but  not  of  the  sort  described  by  Lincoln, 
did  the  people,  three  weeks  later,  make  of  the  Democratic 
leader.  Returning  home  to  Chicago,  with  the  glory  of 
his  gallant  fight  against  the  administration  still  fresh 
about  him,  he  opened  his  canvass  there  on  the  evening 
of  July  9,  at  a  magnificent  public  reception.  The  speech 
made  by  the  Senator  on  that  occasion,  from  a  balcony  of 
the  Tremont  House,  was  a  vigorous  reply  to  Lincoln,  of 
whom,  in  the  flush  of  his  pride,  he  spoke  patronizingly 
as  "  a  kind,  amiable,  and  intelligent  gentleman." 34  The 
speaker  might  have  added  "  alert "  to  this  catalogue  of 
good  qualities,  for  Lincoln  was  present  at  the  meeting,  and 
when  Douglas  had  concluded,  he  announced,  in  answer 


96        LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

to  calls  for  a  speech,  that  he  would  reply  from  the  same 
place,  on  the  following  evening.  At  the  time  appointed 
the  audience  for  the  most  part  returned,  but  Douglas, 
not  deigning  to  do  so,  went  to  a  theatre  instead.  When 
he  spoke  in  Bloomington,  on  the  16th  of  July,  Lincoln 
was  again  a  watchful  auditor,  and  the  Senator's  speech 
in  Springfield,  the  next  day,  was  followed,  within  a  few 
hours,  by  his  opponent's  rejoinder  to  the  Bloomington 
address.35  This  continued,  meeting  after  meeting.  Yet, 
however  closely  Lincoln  pressed  Douglas,  it  soon  be- 
came evident  that  the  "  Little  Giant,"  with  his  plausible 
oratory  and  cleverly  managed  campaign  machinery,  had 
made  the  better  start.  Then  Lincoln,  recalling  his  old 
tactics  at  close  quarters,  challenged  Douglas  to  a  series 
of  debates.  In  response,  the  latter,  having  accepted  the 
proposition,  stipulated  that  there  were  to  be  seven  meet- 
ings, at  places  and  on  dates  specified  by  him.38  The  terms, 
as  further  laid  down  by  Douglas,  gave  him  the  advantage 
of  opening  and  closing  the  series,  of  speaking  eleven  times 
to  his  antagonist's  ten,  and  of  having  four  openings  and 
closes  to  Lincoln's  three.  That  "amiable  gentleman," 
however,  was  not  entirely  a  stranger,  as  we  have  seen,  to 
the  idea  of  giving  the  great  man  odds,  so  he  promptly 
accepted  the  conditions.37 

What  manner  of  man  Stephen  A.  Douglas  had  become 
since  those  primitive  Vandalia  days,  when  he  started  with 
Lincoln  in  the  race  for  political  fame  and  fortune,  is  wor- 
thy of  notice  at  this,  a  critical  point  in  their  course.  The 
slight,  boyish  figure  which,  in  1834,  had  struck  the  big- 
boned  young  member  from  Sangamon  as  that  of  "the 
least  man  "  in  his  experience,  though  no  taller  by  1858, 
had  materially  developed  otherwise.  A  sturdy,  thick-set 
frame,  with  broad  shoulders  and  deep  chest,  gave  evi- 
dence of  physical  vigor  as  clearly  as  the  massive  head, 
high  forehead,  flashing  blue  eyes,  and  firm,  expressive 
month  indicated  intellectual  strength.  Whatever  the 
shrewd,  bold  mind  might  plan,  the  body,  with  its  ex- 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE          97 

traordinary  energy  and  powers  of  endurance,  could  evi- 
dently be  relied  on  to  carry  out.  Thus  doubly  fortified 
by  nature,  Douglas  was  an  opponent  to  compel  respect. 
Moreover,  the  remarkable  public  career  which  had  borne 
him,  while  still  young,  from  unfriended  obscurity  to  the 
leadership  of  a  great  party,  may  be  said  to  have  schooled 
him  in  all  the  arts  and  accomplishments  that  make  such 
a  man  formidable.  With  an  exhaustive  knowledge  of  our 
political  history,  and  a  grasp  no  less  comprehensive  of 
the  problems  that  arise  in  party  management,  was  com- 
bined an  insight,  well-nigh  precise,  into  the  shifting  cur- 
rents of  popular  favor.  This  store  of  wisdom  was  paral- 
leled by  the  skill  with  which  it  was  applied.  No  obstacle 
was  long  suffered  to  obstruct  Douglas's  progress.  Ques- 
tions of  principle,  of  measures,  and  of  men  were  all 
weighed  alike  in  the  balance  of  an  ambition  as  inordinate 
as  it  was  selfish.  Yet,  so  artfully  did  he  manage,  that 
people,  mistaking  the  self-seeking  politician  for  the  patri- 
otic statesman,  crowned  him  with  successive  honors. 

A  member  of  the  Illinois  legislature  at  the  age  of  23, 
State  Supreme  Court  Judge  at  28,  Congressman  at  30, 
United  States  Senator  at  34,  and  a  powerfully  supported 
candidate  for  presidential  nomination  at  the  uncommonly 
youthful  age  of  39,  Douglas  was  generally  acknowledged, 
even  some  years  before  the  period  at  which  we  have  arrived, 
to  be  the  ablest,  as  well  as  the  most  cherished,  of  the 
Democratic  leaders.  Indeed,  a  considerable  element  in  the 
party  looked  for  guidance  to  him,  and  to  him  alone. 
Through  fair  weather  and  foul  it  had  clung  to  the  man 
with  a  devotion  that  has  not  been  surpassed  in  the  history 
of  the  organization.  For  Douglas  knew,  as  possibly  but 
one  other  American  ever  did,  how  to  captivate  at  once  the 
heads  and  the  hearts  of  the  young  men.  They  admired  his 
sagacity,  dash,  fearlessness,  and  indomitable  will ;  they 
loved  him  for  the  ardent,  sunny  temperament  that  mani- 
fested itself  with  equal  readiness  in  a  warm  greeting  or  a 
personal  service,  in  the  reckless  expenditure  of  his  means, 


98         LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

or  in  the  good-fellowship  of  a  convivial  circle ;  but  above 
all  they  exulted,  as  did  many  of  their  elders,  over  the 
power  of  his  eloquence.  Douglas  was  an  orator  by  nature. 
He  owed  little  or  nothing  of  his  triumphs  in  the  Senate  and 
on  the  stump  to  scholarship.  Discarding  humor,  flights 
of  fancy,  and  rhetorical  ornament  generally,  he  carried 
*iis  hearers  whithersoever  he  would  on  the  flood  of  his 
earnest  logic.  A  flexible  voice,  suited  to  his  terse,  vigorous 
English,  and  a  manner  which  seemed  to  stamp  every  word 
as  the  utterance  of  an  oracle,  imparted  to  what  he  said  all 
the  force  of  which  the  statement  was  capable.  Even  the 
most  audacious  sophisms  or  perversions  of  fact  —  for 
Douglas  never  hesitated  at  either  —  owed  a  certain  plau- 
sibility to  this  impressive  delivery.  It  was  in  running 
discussion,  however,  rather  than  in  the  making  of  a  formal 
speech  —  in  spontaneous  declamation,  passionate  invec- 
tive, and  impromptu  reply,  that  he  particularly  excelled. 
Quick  to  seize  upon  the  weakness  in  an  opponent's  argu- 
ment, adroit  at  making  the  most  of  the  strength  in  his 
own,  expert  in  all  the  wiles  and  stratagems  of  controversy, 
unscrupulous  about  employing  them  to  confound  an 
adversary  or  mislead  his  hearers,  he  was  conceded  to  be 
the  best  off-hand  debater  in  the  Senate  during  one  of  its 
brilliant  epochs.  The  Upper  House  at  the  time  held  not 
a  few  orators  who  wrote  their  drafts  on  the  bank  of  elo- 
quence for  larger  amounts  than  Douglas  could ;  but  the 
flushest  of  them  lacked  so  much  ready  change  as  he  had 
always  about  him.  His  encounters  with  Sumner,  Seward, 
Chase,  Everett,  Crittenden,  Trumbull,  Fessenden,  Hale, 
Wilson,  as  well  as  other  parliamentarians  of  their  class, 
whether  he  met  them  singly  or  sustained  an  assault  in 
force,  had  gained  for  him  an  almost  unbroken  record  of 
forensic  victories.  These  achievements  had  fixed  the 
attention  of  the  nation  upon  him  as  upon  no  other  poli- 
tician of  the  day.  Small  wonder  that  a  man  of  his  caliber 
grew  arrogant.  Recognizing  no  will  but  his  own,  he  came 
to  look  upon  opposition  of  any  kind  with  ill-controlled 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND   LITTLE          99 

passion.  If  to  all  this,  finally,  is  added  that  twelve  years 
in  the  Senate  had  led  him  to  regard  his  seat  as  peculiarly 
his  own,  we  may  form  some  conception  of  what  Lincoln 
undertook  when,  in  the  summer  of  1858,  he  challenged 
Douglas  to  debate  for  the  place. 

No  one  realized  to  what  heights  Douglas  had  climbed 
more  clearly  than  he  who  had  pursued  him  so  persistently. 
Lincoln's  admission,  not  long  before,  of  how  wide  a  gap 
lay  between  them,  makes  a  pathetic  contrast  to  his  dis- 
paragements of  former  days.  "  Twenty-two  years  ago,'' 
said  he,  "  Judge  Douglas  and  I  first  became  acquainted. 
We  were  both  young  then  —  he  a  trifle  younger  than  I. 
Even  then  we  were  both  ambitious  —  I,  perhaps  quite 
as  much  as  he.  With  me,  the  race  of  ambition  has  been 
a  failure  —  a  flat  failure ;  with  him,  it  has  been  one  of 
splendid  success.  His  name  fills  the  nation,  and  is  not 
unknown  even  in  foreign  lands.  I  affect  no  contempt  for 
the  high  eminence  he  has  reached.  So  reached  that  the 
oppressed  of  my  species  might  have  shared  with  me  in  the 
elevation,  I  would  rather  stand  on  that  eminence  than  wear 
the  richest  crown  that  ever  pressed  a  monarch's  brow."38 
In  an  entirely  different  vein,  though  not  less  forcibly,  Lin- 
coln pointed  out,  at  the  beginning  of  the  canvass,  some 
of  Douglas's  further  advantages  over  him.  Said  he  :  — 

"  Senator  Douglas  is  of  world-wide  renown.  All  the 
anxious  politicians  of  his  party,  or  who  have  been  of  his 
party  for  years  past,  have  been  looking  upon  him  as  cer- 
tainly, at  no  distant  day,  to  be  the  President  of  the  United 
States.  They  have  seen  in  his  round,  jolly,  fruitful  face, 
post-offices,  land-offices,  marshalships,  and  cabinet  appoint- 
ments, chargeships,  and  foreign  missions,  bursting  and 
sprouting  out  in  wonderful  exuberance,  ready  to  be  laid 
hold  of  by  their  greedy  hands.  And  as  they  have  been 
gazing  upon  this  attractive  picture  so  long,  they  cannot, 
in  the  little  distraction  that  has  taken  place  in  the  party, 
bring  themselves  to  give  up  the  charming  hope ;  but 
with  greedier  anxiety  they  rush  about  him,  sustain  him, 


ioo      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

and  give  him  marches,  triumphal  entries,  and  receptions 
beyond  what  even  in  the  days  of  his  highest  prosperity 
they  could  have  brought  about  in  his  favor.  On  the  con- 
trary, nobody  has  ever  expected  me  to  be  President.  In 
my  poor,  lean,  lank  face,  nobody  has  ever  seen  that  any 
cabbages  were  sprouting  out.  These  are  disadvantages 
all,  taken  together,  that  the  Republicans  labor  under. 
We  have  to  fight  this  battle  upon  principle,  and  upon 
principle  alone."  * 

Whether  much  principle,  by  the  way,  could  be  intro- 
duced into  a  conflict  with  Douglas,  the  speaker,  after 
twenty  odd  years  of  campaigning  against  him,  was  still 
in  grave  doubt.  Having  sounded  the  depths  and  shallows 
of  his  character,  Lincoln  had  learned  that  when  Douglas 
swore  upon  his  honor  —  his  political  honor,  at  least  —  he 
was,  as  Master  Touchstone  might  have  said,  not  forsworn. 
Lincoln  also  knew  how  subtly  this  moral  laxuess  wound, 
like  a  black  thread,  through  the  man's  comings  and 
goings ;  and  how,  in  the  stress  of  debate,  sophistry,  trick- 
ery, even  falsehood  were  employed  to  establish  his  own 
position,  or  hopelessly  to  befog  that  of  his  opponent.  It 
was  in  reference  to  this  line  of  conduct  that  Lincoln  once 
said :  — 

"Judge  Douglas  is  playing  cuttlefish,  a  small  species 
of  fish  that  has  no  mode  of  defending  itself,  when  pur- 
sued, except  by  throwing  out  a  black  fluid,  which  makes 
the  water  so  dark  the  enemy  cannot  see  it,  and  thus  it 
escapes." 

Speaking,  on  another  occasion,  of  the  Judge's  more 
dangerous  qualities,  he  said  :  — 

"  It  is  impossible  to  get  the  advantage  of  him.  Even 
if  he  is  worsted,  he  so  bears  himself  that  the  people  are 
bewildered  and  uncertain  as  to  who  has  the  better  of  it." 40 
The  impossible,  then,  is  what  Lincoln  was  about  to  under- 
take. 

As  for  Douglas,  his  ostentatious  air  of  confidence  in  him- 
self and  his  patronizing  bearing  toward  Lincoln,  on  the 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE        101 

stump,  hardly  manifested  his  real  attitude.  Upon  receiv- 
ing, at  the  Capital,  a  despatch,  announcing  that  his  old 
opponent  had  been  chosen  to  run  against  him  for  the 
Senate,  he  had  said  to  the  group  of  Republican  repre- 
sentatives gathered  about  him  to  hear  it  read :  — 

"  Well,  gentlemen,  you  have  nominated  a  very  able  and 
a  very  honest  man." 41 

A  more  emphatic,  if  not  so  dignified;  form  of  the  com- 
ment was  that  in  which  it  had  been  expressed,  privately, 
on  several  occasions : —  ."  '  ;,  :  •  !*',•'• '';  ',• '  '. 

"  Of  all  the  damned  Whig  rasdais'  about  -Springfield, 
Abe  Lincoln  is  the  ablest  and  most  honest."  ° 

Discussing  the  nominee  with  John  W.  Forney,  Douglas 
had  observed :  — 

"  I  shall  have  my  hands  full.  He  is  the  strong  man  of 
his  party  —  full  of  wit,  facts,  dates  —  and  the  best  stump- 
speaker,  with  his  droll  ways  and  dry  jokes,  in  the  West. 
He  is  as  honest  as  he  is  shrewd ;  and  if  I  beat  him,  my 
victory  will  be  hardly  won."  43 

In  view  of  these  opinions  and  of  the  previous  encoun- 
ters upon  which  they  were  based,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
Douglas  was  loath  now,  even  more  than  four  years  before, 
to  meet  Lincoln  in  debate.  When  the  challenge  was 
received,  the  Democratic  leader  said  to  certain  of  his 
political  friends :  — 

"  I  do  not  feel,  between  you  and  me,  that  I  want  to  go 
into  this  debate.  The  whole  country  knows  me  and  has 
me  measured.  Lincoln,  as  regards  myself,  is  compara- 
tively unknown,44  and  if  he  gets  the  best  of  this  debate,  — 
and  I  want  to  say  he  is  the  ablest  man  the  Republi- 
cans have  got,  —  I  shall  lose  everything  and  Lincoln  will 
gain  everything.  Should  I  win,  I  shall  gain  but  little.  I 
do  not  want  to  go  into  a  debate  with  Abe."  45 

Moreover,  after  agreeing  to  the  proposed  meetings  — 
for  there  was  no  escape  from  them  in  1858,  any  more 
than  there  had  been  in  1854  —  he  declared  to  some  of  his 
supporters  who  spoke  slightingly  of  his  antagonist :  — 


102       LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

"  Gentlemen,  you  do  not  know  Mr.  Lincoln.  I  have 
known  him  long  and  well,  and  I  know  that  I  shall  have 
anything  but  an  easy  task.  I  assure  you  I  would  rather 
meet  any  other  man  in  the  country,  in  this  joint-debate, 
than  Abraham  Lincoln."  48 

Whatever  disquietude  Douglas  manifested,  in  these 
few  instances,  was  not  shared  by  his  followers.  Looking 
.forward  to -the. contest  with  assurance  of  success,  they  set 
no'  bounds,  as"  was'  their  wont,  to  partisan  enthusiasm. 
Amidst  their  noisy  demonstrations  were  heard  boasts  that 
Douglas  would'"  use  up  and  utterly  demolish"  Lincoln, 
that  the  country  would  shortly  be  treated  to  the  specta- 
cle of  "the  Little  Giant  chawing  up  Old  Abe,"  and 
the  like.47  These  things  naturally  cast  a  damper  over 
Lincoln's  friends.  Somewhat  disheartened,  at  the  outset, 
by  the  prestige  of  Douglas's  brilliant  career,  as  well  as 
by  his  unquestioned  ability,  they  came  to  regard  the  ap- 
proaching trial  of  strength  with  forebodings  that  were 
poorly  concealed  from  their  champion  himself.  He  was, 
in  fact,  keenly  alive  to  this  lack  of  confidence.  It  showed 
itself  in  the  comments  of  the  Republican  press,  no  less 
than  in  the  talk  of  his  supporters.  One  of  them,  Judge 
H.  W.  Beckwith  of  Danville,  happened  to  greet  him,  on 
the  street  in  Springfield,  shortly  before  the  first  meeting. 
Inquiry  as  to  the  state  of  things  in  Vermilion  County 
evoked  the  statement  by  the  Judge  that  the  leader's 
friends  there  awaited  the  coming  debate  with  deep  con- 
cern. This  appeared  to  move  Lincoln.  The  pained  expres- 
sion that  passed  over  his  face,  however,  quickly  gave 
place  to  one  of  resolution.  Then,  in  his  half-serious,  half- 
jocular  way,  he  said,  as  he  seated  himself  upon  the  steps 
of  the  Chenery  House,  before  which  they  stood :  — 

"  Sit  down.  I  have  a  moment  to  spare  and  will  tell 
you  a  story.  You  have  seen  two  men  about  to  fight  ?  " 

"  Yes,  many  times." 

"  Well,  one  of  them  brags  about  what  he  means  to  do. 
He  jumps  high  in  the  air,  cracking  his  heels  together, 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE         103 

smites  his  fists,  and  wastes  his  breath  trying  to  scare  some- 
body. You  see  the  other  fellow,  he  says  not  a  word  "  — 
here  the  speaker  became  very  earnest  and  repeated,  "  you 
see  the  other  man  says  not  a  word.  His  arms  are  at  his 
side,  his  fists  are  closely  doubled  up,  his  head  is  drawn  to 
the  shoulder,  and  his  teeth  are  set  firm  together.  He  is 
saving  his  wind  for  the  fight,  and  as  sure  as  it  comes  off 
he  will  win  it,  or  die  a-trying."  tf 

There  spoke  the  victor  of  Clary's  Grove.  He  had 
learned  that  the  principles  of  mastery  do  not  vary,  whether 
they  are  applied  to  a  backwoods  scuffle  or  a  great  political 
controversy. 

The  Lincoln-Douglas  debates,  as  they  are  called,  were 
the  most  remarkable  exhibitions  of  their  kind  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  country.  Never  before  nor  since  have  two  of 
its  citizens  engaged  in  a  series  of  public  discussions  which 
involved  questions  of  equal  importance.  Personal  and 
purely  local  differences  were  overshadowed,  from  the  very 
beginning,  by  what  the  disputants  had  to  say  on  issues  so 
momentous  that  they  were  destined,  within  a  few  years,  to 
plunge  the  country  into  civil  war.  Lincoln,  accordingly, 
did  not  greatly  exaggerate  when  he  spoke,  at  Quincy,  of 
the  seven  meetings  as  "  the  successive  acts  of  a  drama  to 
be  enacted  not  merely  in  the  face  of  audiences  like  this, 
but  in  the  face  of  the  nation  and,  to  some  extent,  in  the 
face  of  the  world."  49  To  reconstruct  these  stirring  scenes, 
in  pen  pictures,  almost  half  a  century  after  the  curtain 
was  rung  down,  is  as  much  beyond  our  power  as  to  do 
justice  by  the  actors,  in  any  summary  of  their  speeches. 
Only  a  careful  reading  of  the  263  pages  in  which  the 
debates  have  been  preserved  will  convey  an  adequate  idea 
of  how  brilliantly,  from  the  intellectual  point  of  view,  both 
conducted  themselves.  Now  Douglas  appears  to  prevail, 
now  Lincoln.  One  page  persuades  us  that  slavery  iu 
constitutional,  and  that  each  commonwealth  should  be 
allowed  to  have  "  the  institution,"  or  not,  as  it  elects. 
We  turn  the  leaf,  and  lo !  we  are  convinced  that  slavery 


104      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF    MEN 

is  wrong,  and  ought,  at  least,  to  be  restricted.  The  ques- 
tions at  issue  in  the  debates,  however,  —  their  morals 
and  their  politics,  —  lie  beyond  the  scope  of  our  present 
inquiry.  Look  we  then  to  the  debaters  themselves. 

The  jaunty  manner  in  which  Douglas  had  talked 
down  to  Lincoln,  at  the  commencement  of  the  canvass, 
in  Chicago,  had  not  left  him  when  he  opened  the  joint- 
meetings,  in  Ottawa.  At  some  of  the  intervening  Demo- 
cratic rallies,  he  had,  it  is  true,  so  far  forgotten  himself 
as  to  indulge  in  violent  utterances  against  his  opponent ; 
but  when  they  stood  face  to  face  again,  he  patted  him  on 
the  back,  as  before.50  And  the  caress  was  not  the  less 
gentle  because  it  came  between  blows  aimed  at  Lincoln's 
political  record.  Said  Douglas :  — 

"  In  the  remarks  I  have  made  on  this  platform,  and 
the  position  of  Mr.  Lincoln  upon  it,  I  mean  nothing  per- 
sonally disrespectful  or  unkind  to  that  gentleman.  I 
have  known  him  for  nearly  twenty-five  years.  There  were 
many  points  of  sympathy  between  us  when  we  first  got 
acquainted.  We  were  both  comparatively  boys,  and  both 
struggling  with  poverty  in  a  strange  land.  I  was  a  school- 
teacher in  the  town  of  Winchester,  and  he  a  flourishing 
grocery-keeper  in  the  town  of  Salem.  He  was  more  suc- 
cessful in  his  occupation  than  I  was  in  mine,  and  hence 
more  fortunate  in  this  world's  goods.  Lincoln  is  one  of 
those  peculiar  men  who  perform  with  admirable  skill 
everything  which  they  undertake.  I  made  as  good  a 
school-teacher  as  I  could,  and  when  a  cabinet-maker  I 
made  a  good  bedstead  and  tables,  although  my  old  boss 
said  I  succeeded  better  with  bureaus  and  secretaries  than 
with  anything  else ;  but  I  believe  that  Lincoln  was  always 
more  successful  in  business  than  I,  for  his  business  enabled 
him  to  get  into  the  legislature.  I  met  him  there,  however, 
and  had  sympathy  with  him,  because  of  the  uphill  strug- 
gle we  both  had  in  life.  He  was  then  just  as  good  at 
telling  an  anecdote  as  now.  He  could  beat  any  of  the 
boys  wrestling,  or  running  a  foot-race,  in  pitching  quoits, 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE         io§ 

or  tossing  a  copper ;  could  ruin  more  liquor  than  all  the 
boys  of  the  town  together,  and  the  dignity  and  impartiality 
with  which  he  presided  at  a  horse-race  or  fist-fight  excited 
the  admiration  and  won  the  praise  of  everybody  that  was 
present  and  participated.  I  sympathized  with  him  because 
he  was  struggling  with  difficulties,  and  so  was  I/  Mr.  Lin- 
coln served  with  me  in  the  legislature  in  1836,  when  we 
both  retired,  and  he  subsided,  or  became  submerged,  and  he 
was  lost  sight  of  as  a  public  man  for  some  years.  In  1846, 
when  Wilmot  introduced  his  celebrated  proviso  and  the 
Abolition  tornado  swept  over  the  country,  Lincoln  again 
turned  up  as  a  member  of  Congress  from  the  Sangamon 
district.  I  was  then  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States, 
and  was  glad  to  welcome  my  old  friend  and  companion." 51 

But  the  "  old  friend  and  companion,"  when  he  arose  to 
reply,  was  in  no  mood  for  compliments.  A  bit  of  sarcasm 
was  his  only  reference  to  the  other's  patronage. 

"As  the  judge  had  complimented  me,"  said  he,  "with 
these  pleasant  titles  (I  must  confess  to  my  weakness),  I 
was  a  little  '  taken,'  for  it  came  from  a  great  man.  I  was 
not  very  much  accustomed  to  flattery,  and  it  came  the 
sweeter  to  me.  I  was  rather  like  the  Hoosier  with  the 
gingerbread,  when  he  said  he  reckoned  he  loved  it  better 
than  any  other  man,  and  got  less  of  it.  As  the  Judge  had 
so  flattered  me,  I  could  not  make  up  my  mind  that  he 
meant  to  deal  unfairly  with  me." 52 

It  was  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  that  Douglas  had 
throughout,  with  the  artfulness  in  which  he  knew  no  peer, 
so  misrepresented  Lincoln's  career  and  misstated  his 
principles  as  to  place  him  almost  entirely  on  the  defen- 
sive. Purely  defensive  tactics,  whether  in  physical  or 
intellectual  contests,  rarely  succeed.  Hence  the  advan- 
tage, as  the  first  debate  closed,  appeared  to  rest  with  the 
"Little  Giant."  Lincoln's  speech,  it  is  true,  had  been 
received  with  enthusiasm,  and,  as  he  left  the  platform,  his 
excited  supporters,  lifting  him  upon  their  shoulders,  had 
carried  him,  with  songs  and  huzzas,  to  the  place  where  he 


106       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

was  to  spend  the  night.  Still,  this  happened  in  a  Repub- 
lican district,  and  his  well-wishers  elsewhere,  as  they  read 
the  report  of  the  discussion  in  cold  type,  might  with 
reason  have  renewed  their  fears  for  the  result. 

There  was  a  change  in  the  situation  when  next  the 
champions  met  —  at  Freeport.  Here  Lincoln  assumed  the 
offensive,  and  thenceforth,  to  the  end  of  the  series,  he  fre- 
quently forced  the  fighting.  Coolly  parrying  his  antag- 
onist's most  dangerous  blows,  he  countered  with  a  force 
under  which  the  redoubtable  Douglas  sometimes  reeled. 
That  gentleman's  air  of  superiority  soon  disappeared.  The 
pace  became  too  hot  for  any  such  pretence.  All  his  re- 
markable dialectic  powers  were  called  into  play  to  com- 
bat a  logic  keener  than  his  own  and  a  straightforward 
persistence  of  purpose  that  no  artifice  could  turn  aside. 
When  his  sophisms  were  confuted  and  his  untruths 
exposed,  he  had  a  way  of  introducing  them  over  and  over 
again  in  bewildering  guises.  Not  Proteus  himself  took 
so  many  shapes  before  he  gave  up  the  truth.  Nor  was  the 
little  old  man  of  the  sea  enmeshed,  at  last,  in  his  fetters, 
more  securely  than  was  the  "  Little  Giant  "  in  the  chain 
of  reasoning  that  Lincoln  so  deftly  wound  around  him. 
Twist  and  turn  how  he  would,  Douglas  could  not  extri- 
cate himself.  Losing  his  temper  as  he  lost  ground,  he  fell 
upon  his  adversary  with  personalities  which  the  latter  was 
not  slow  to  return  in  kind.  Then  Douglas  protested. 

"  Does  Mr.  Lincoln,"  said  he  at  Galesburg,  "  wish  to 
push  these  things  to  the  point  of  personal  difficulties 
here  ?  I  commenced  this  contest  by  treating  him  courte- 
ously and  kindly ;  I  always  spoke  of  him  in  words  of 
respect,  and  in  return  he  has  sought,  and  is  now  seeking, 
to  divert  public  attention  from  the  enormity  of  his  revo- 
lutionary principles  by  impeaching  men's  sincerity  and 
integrity,  and  inviting  personal  quarrels." 53 

To  which  Lincoln  replied :  — 

"  I  do  not  understand  but  what  he  impeaches  my  honor, 
my  veracity,  and  my  candor ;  and  because  he  does  this, 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND   LITTLE         107 

I  do  not  understand  that  I  am  bound,  if  I  see  a  truthful 
ground  for  it,  to  keep  my  hands  off  of  him.  As  soon  as  I 
learned  that  Judge  Douglas  was  disposed  to  treat  me  in 
this  way,  I  signified  in  one  of  my  speeches  that  I  should 
be  driven  to  draw  upon  whatever  of  humble  resources  I 
might  have  —  to  adopt  a  new  course  with  him.  I  was  not 
entirely  sure  that  I  should  be  able  to  hold  my  own  with 
him,  but  I  at  least  had  the  purpose  made  to  do  as  well  as 
I  could  upon  him ;  and  now  I  say  that  I  will  not  be  the 
first  to  cry,  *  Hold  ! '  I  think  it  originated  with  the  Judge, 
and  when  he  quits,  I  probably  will.  But  I  shall  not  ask 
any  favors  at  all.  He  asks  me,  or  he  asks  the  audience,  if 
I  wish  to  push  this  matter  to  the  point  of  personal  diffi- 
culty. I  tell  him,  No.  He  did  not  make  a  mistake  in  one 
of  his  early  speeches,  when  he  called  me  an  '  amiable ' 
man,  though  perhaps  he  did  when  he  called  me  an  *  intel- 
ligent' man.  It  really  hurts  me  very  much  to  suppose 
that  I  have  wronged  anybody  on  earth.  I  again  tell  him, 
No.  I  very  much  prefer,  when  this  canvass  shall  be  over, 
however  it  may  result,  that  we  at  least  part  without  any 
bitter  recollections  of  personal  difficulties.  The  Judge, 
in  his  concluding  speech  at  Galesburg,  says  that  I  was 
pushing  this  matter  to  a  personal  difficulty  to  avoid  the 
responsibility  for  the  enormity  of  my  principles.  I  say  to 
the  Judge  and  this  audience  now,  that  I  will  again  state 
our  principles  as  well  as  I  hastily  can  in  all  their  enor- 
mity, and  if  the  Judge  hereafter  chooses  to  confine  himself 
to  a  war  upon  these  principles,  he  will  probably  not  find 
me  departing  from  the  same  course." 54 

This  fairly  indicates  Lincoln's  attitude.  Thrice  armed 
in  the  justice  of  his  position,  he  held  it  with  equal  vigor, 
against  argument  or  abuse,  changing  weapons  as  his  ad- 
versary changed  his,  and  evincing  no  animosity,  even 
while  he  dealt  the  most  telling  strokes.  His  customary 
humor  was,  however,  to  a  large  extent,  noticeable  for  its 
absence.  When  urged  by  his  friends  to  introduce  some 
of  his  witty  illustrations  and  amusing  anecdotes,  so  that 


io8       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

audiences  might  applaud  him  as  often  as  they  did  Doug, 
las,  he  refused,  saying  :  — 

"  The  occasion  is  too  serious.  The  issues  are  too  grave. 
I  do  not  seek  applause,  or  to  amuse  the  people,  but  to 
convince  them."  55 

Moreover,  beyond  the  cloud  of  local  voters  that  envel- 
oped the  rude  platforms  in  the  Illinois  clearings,  he  saw 
what  these  friends  and  what  Douglas  himself  too  often 
lost  sight  of,  —  the  listening  nation.  To  this  larger  forum 
Lincoln  addressed  himself.  He  was  eager  enough  for  the 
exalted  office  at  stake  ;  but  what  appealed  as  much,  if  not 
more,  to  his  ambition,  was  the  hope  of  overcoming  his 
ancient  rival,  in  the  eyes  of  the  whole  country. 

One  incident  of  the  debates  is,  in  this  connection,  of 
particular  interest.  At  the  first  meeting,  Douglas  chal- 
lenged Lincoln  to  answer  a  series  of  seven  interrogatories, 
based  on  the  slavery  problem.  They  were  shrewdly  cal- 
culated to  entrap  him  into  inconsistencies,  or  to  elicit 
expressions  of  radical  doctrine  for  which  the  people  at 
large  were  hardly  prepared.  Lincoln  did  not  formally 
reply  at  once,  but  during  the  interval  between  that  and 
the  following  debate,  he  got  ready  a  set  of  answers,  re- 
markable for  their  blending  of  adroitness  and  candor.  At 
the  same  time,  as  "questions"  is  a  game  that  two  can 
play,  he  framed  four  interrogatories,  designed,  in  their 
turn,  to  embarrass  Douglas.  This  was  especially  so  of  the 
one  which  read  :  — 

"  Can  the  people  of  a  United  States  Territory,  in  any 
lawful  way,  against  the  wish  of  any  citizen  of  the  United 
States,  exclude  slavery  from  its  limits,  prior  to  the  forma- 
tion of  a  State  constitution  ?  "  M 

The  question  would  bring  the  author  of  "  popular  sov- 
ereignty "  face  to  face  with  the  irreconcilable  contradiction 
between  his  theory  that  the  people  of  a  Territory  had  the 
right  to  exclude  slavery,  or  not,  as  they  wished,  and  his 
defence  of  the  Dred  Scott  decision,  according  to  which 
they  had  no  such  right.  Was  it  wise,  however,  to  give 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE        109 

Douglas  this  opportunity  for  patching  up  the  defect  in 
his  armor  ?  "  No,"  said  the  Republican  leaders,  to  whom 
Lincoln  submitted  the  questions,  on  the  eve  of  the  Free- 
port  meeting,  —  unanimously,  "No."  Douglas,  they  said 
in  effect,  would  not  of  his  own  accord,  for  fear  of  further 
offending  the  South,  touch  upon  the  subject  any  more 
than  he  found  necessary.  Consequently,  his  support  of  the 
decision  might  be  attacked  to  advantage.  On  the  other 
hand,  argued  they,  if  forced  to  give  a  categorical  answer, 
he  will  say,  "Yes,"  adhere  to  "popular  sovereignty,"  de- 
clare that  the  decision  is  an  abstract  proposition  depend- 
ent for  its  force  upon  local  legislation,  and  thus  gain  a 
number  of  still  doubtful  votes.57 

"  If  he  does  that,"  said  Lincoln,  "  he  can  never  be 
President." 

"But,"  replied  one  of  his  friends,  "he  may  be  Sen- 
ator." 

"  Perhaps,"  rejoined  Lincoln  ;  "  but  I  am  after  larger 
game.  The  battle  of  1860  is  worth  a  hundred  of  this."  M 

His  anxious  supporters  labored  with  him  to  the  last 
moment  before  the  debate  opened,  in  the  hope  of  persuad- 
ing him  to  abandon  that  question.  They  protested,  not 
unreasonably,  against  jeopardizing  the  present  canvass 
for  one  that  was  two  years  distant ;  but  their  candidate, 
with  the  self-reliance  that  customarily  followed  his  care- 
ful study  of  a  subject,  persisted  in  his  purpose.59  When 
the  question  was  put,  Douglas  answered  as  had  been  pre- 
dicted ;  and  how  accurately  the  effects  of  that  answer  w  had 
been  forecast  by  the  questioner,  we  shall  presently  see. 

Important  as  the  debates  were,  they  constituted  but 
a  small  part  of  this  memorable  canvass.  To  consider  all 
the  elements  that  entered  into  the  contest,  and  to  credit 
each  with  its  precise  bearing  upon  the  result,  would  be 
difficult,  if  not  impossible.  A  number  of  speakers — as- 
pirants for  State  offices  and  politicians  generally  —  sup- 
ported one  or  the  other,  as  the  case  might  be,  of  the 
senatorial  candidates.  The  advantage,  in  this  respect, 


no      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

owing  to  the  eloquent  aid  of  Trumbull,  probably  lay 
with  Lincoln.  It  is  agreed,  on  the  other  hand,  that  cir- 
cumstances favored  Douglas,  and  that  nothing  did  this  to 
so  great  an  extent  as  the  hostility  of  President  Buchanan. 
The  administration  party's  effort  to  compass  the  Senator's 
defeat,  its  nomination  of  a  third  State  ticket  to  divide  the 
Democratic  vote,  its  virulent  attacks  upon  him  in  the 
press,  and  its  abuse  of  Federal  patronage  to  punish  his 
supporters,  served  merely  to  close  up  the  ranks  of  those 
supporters,  as  they  glorified  the  almost  heroic  courage 
with  which  he  fought  Republicans  in  front,  and  Buchanan 
Democrats  in  the  rear.  Moreover,  the  animosity  of  the 
President  and  his  pro-slavery  adherents  against  Douglas 
kept  alive  the  sympathy  of  prominent  Republicans,  as 
well  as  other  anti-administration  leaders,  throughout  the 
country.  They  loved  the  "  Little  Giant"  —  somewhat  as 
did  those  who  cherished  a  nobler  Democrat,  of  a  later  day 
—  for  the  enemies  he  had  made,  and  their  influence 
brought  him  many  times  as  many  votes  as  Buchanan  took. 
Indeed,  a  single  favorable  letter,  penned  at  a  critical  point 
in  the  struggle,  by  Senator  Crittenden  of  Kentucky, 
turned  the  wavering  scale  in  enough  districts  to  ensure 
the  election  of  Douglas.61 

But  what  Douglas  himself  accomplished  and  how  close 
his  competitor  kept  to  him,  through  it  all,  are  the  strik- 
ing features  of  the  contest.  From  the  midsummer  evening 
on  which  it  was  opened  by  the  Democratic  candidate,  in 
Chicago,  to  the  night  before  election,  when  he  tried,  dur- 
ing a  chill  November  storm,  to  deliver  his  closing  speech, 
in  that  same  city,  Douglas  made  a  fight  as  spirited  as  it 
was  able.  Traversing  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  State, 
he  spoke  at  all  hours  and  places,  regardless  of  weather 
or  personal  fatigue.  In  the  one  hundred  working  days 
between  July  9  and  November  2,  he  made,  according  to 
his  own  statement,  one  hundred  and  thirty  speeches.62 
This  vigorous  campaign  frequently  necessitated  travel- 
ing by  night  and  speaking  —  for  the  most  part,  in  the 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE         in 

open  air  —  several  times  on  the  same  day ;  but  the  attend- 
ant hardships  were  alleviated,  as  much  as  could  be,  at 
every  turn.  Luxuriously  fitted  special  cars,  filled  usu- 
ally with  a  retinue  of  friends,  carried  him  to  many  of  his 
appointments,  as  one  contemporary  says,  "  like  a  conquer- 
ing hero."  M  His  approach  was  announced  to  the  waiting 
crowds  by  salutes  fired  from  cannon  mounted  on  a  plat- 
form car,  and  by  the  music  of  a  brass  band.  Processions, 
banners,  triumphal  arches,  decorations,  receptions,  ser- 
enades, fireworks,  and  the  boisterous  enthusiasm  of  the 
people  —  manufactured,  when  it  failed  to  be  spontaneous 
—  stimulated  Douglas,  as  would  indeed  have  been  the 
case  with  a  man  of  weaker  fiber,  to  strenuous  exertion. 
Drawing  upon  all  his  resources,  material  no  less  than 
physical  and  intellectual,  he  cashed  the  obligations  under 
which  so  many  rested,  for  political  favors,  into  a  large 
campaign  fund  that  was  disbursed  with  a  lavish  hand. 
His  own  contributions,  leaving  him  deeply  in  debt,  drained 
his  estate  to  the  extent,  it  is  said,  of  eighty  thousand  dol- 
lars.64 This  sum  and  Lincoln's  subscription  of  five  hun- 
dred dollars,  or  thereabouts,  to  the  Republican  fund,  form 
a  contrast,  typical  of  differences  between  the  candidates 
and  their  methods,  that  ran  through  the  entire  canvass.65 

Neither  enthusiasm  nor  the  customary  electioneering 
devices  were  lacking  among  Lincoln's  followers,  but  their 
leader  disliked  "  fizzlegigs  and  fireworks,"  to  use  his  own 
phrase,  as  much  as  his  competitor  desired  them.  While 
the  latter  omitted  no  flourish  that  might  gain  a  vote,  the 
former  relied,  as  much  as  his  managers  would  let  him, 
upon  the  stump ;  while  the  one  was  customarily  driven 
through  a  town  in  the  most  elegant  carriage  to  be  ob- 
tained, the  other  was  drawn  about  not  infrequently  on  a 
farm-wagon  ;  and,  what  was  of  the  greatest  importance, 
while  Douglas  enjoyed  the  best  railroad  facilities  that 
money  or  influence  could  secure,  Lincoln  had  to  cover  the 
same  ground  as  he  did,  with  scant  favor.  "  At  all  points 
on  the  road  where  meetings  between  the  two  great  poll- 


ii2      LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

ticians  were  held,"  relates  Colonel  Lamon,  "either  a 
special  train  or  a  special  car  was  furnished  to  Judge  Doug- 
las ;  but  Mr.  Lincoln,  when  he  failed  to  get  transportation 
on  the  regular  trains,  in  time  to  meet  his  appointments, 
was  reduced  to  the  necessity  of  going  as  freight.  There 
being  orders  from  headquarters  to  permit  no  passenger 
to  travel  on  freight  trains,  Mr.  Lincoln's  persuasive 
powers  were  often  brought  into  requisition.  The  favor  was 
granted  or  refused  according  to  the  politics  of  the  con- 
ductor. On  one  occasion,  in  going  to  meet  an  appoint- 
ment in  the  southern  part  of  the  State  —  that  section  of 
Illinois  called  Egypt  —  Mr.  Lincoln  and  I,  with  other 
friends,  were  traveling  in  the  '  caboose '  of  a  freight  train, 
when  we  were  switched  off  the  main  track  to  allow  a 
special  train  to  pass  in  which  Mr.  Lincoln's  more  aristo- 
cratic rival  was  being  conveyed.  The  passing  train  was 
decorated  with  banners  and  flags,  and  carried  a  band 
of  music  which  was  playing  '  Hail  to  the  Chief.'  As 
the  train  whistled  past,  Mr.  Lincoln  broke  out  in  a  fit 
of  laughter  and  said,  'Boys,  the  gentleman  in  that  car 
evidently  smelt  no  royalty  in  our  carriage.'  "  m 

Another  incident  in  point  is  recalled  by  Major  Whit- 
ney. "  Lincoln  and  I,"  says  he,  "  were  at  the  Centralia 
agricultural  fair,  the  day  after  the  debate  at  Jonesboro. 
Night  came  on  and  we  were  tired,  having  been  on  the  fair 
grounds  all  day.  We  were  to  go  north  on  the  Illinois 
Central  Railroad.  The  train  was  due  at  midnight,  and 
the  depot  was  full  of  people.  I  managed  to  get  a  chair 
for  Lincoln  in  the  office  of  the  Superintendent  of  the 
railroad,  but  small  politicians  would  intrude  so  that  he 
could  scarcely  get  a  moment's  sleep.  The  train  came  and 
was  filled  instantly.  I  got  a  seat  near  the  door  for  Lincoln 
and  myself.  He  was  worn  out  and  had  to  meet  Douglas 
the  next  day  at  Charleston.  An  empty  car,  called  a  saloon 
car,  was  hitched  on  to  the  rear  of  the  train  and  locked  up. 
I  asked  the  conductor,  who  knew  Lincoln  and  myself 
well,  —  we  were  both  attorneys  of  the  road,  —  if  Lincoln 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE         113 

could  not  ride  in  that  car ;  that  he  was  exhausted  and 
needed  rest ;  but  the  conductor  refused.  I  afterwards  got 
him  in  by  a  stratagem.  At  the  same  time,  George  B. 
McClellan  in  person  [then  Vice-President  of  the  road] 
was  taking  Douglas  around  in  a  special  car  and  special 
train ;  and  that  was  the  unjust  treatment  Lincoln  got 
from  the  Illinois  Central  Railroad." 67 

Nevertheless,  as  the  struggle  drew  to  a  close,  the  favored 
candidate,  vigorous  as  he  was,  almost  succumbed  to  the 
strain,  and  his  voice  became  so  hoarse  that  it  was  painful 
to  hear  him.  On  the  other  hand,  Lincoln,  who,  without 
making  so  many  speeches,  had  probably  endured  all  that 
Douglas  had  and  more,  appeared  to  be  in  prime  condition. 
His  voice  was  as  clear,  his  eye  as  bright,  and  his  step  as 
firm  as  if  he  were  about  to  begin,  not  to  end,  one  of  the 
severest  of  political  conflicts. 

The  election,  which  took  place  on  November  2,  re- 
sulted in  a  virtual  victory,  but  at  the  same  time,  an  actual 
defeat,  for  Lincoln.  His  party,  making  heavy  gains  over 
its  returns  in  1856  when  Buchanan  carried  Illinois,  polled 
the  largest  popular  vote  and  elected  its  State  ticket.  The 
Douglas  men,  however,  profiting  by  inequalities  in  the  ap- 
portionment of  legislative  districts,  as  well  as  by  the  fact 
that  eight  out  of  thirteen  State  Senators  who  held  over 
were  Democrats,  had  a  majority,  on  joint  ballot,  in  the 
legislature.  When  that  body  met  in  January,  1859,  it 
accordingly  reflected  Douglas. 

Lincoln  took  his  defeat  as  resignedly  as  could  be  ex- 
pected. He  was,  as  we  have  seen,  not  unprepared  for  such 
a  result ;  yet  this  second  check  to  his  ambitions  must  have 
borne  hard  upon  a  man  who  once  said  that  he  "  would 
rather  have  a  full  term  in  the  Senate  than  in  the  Presi- 
dency." m  The  courageous,  hopeful  letters  written  by  him, 
at  about  this  time,  do  not  —  it  is  safe  to  say  —  reveal  all 
his  emotions.  He  felt,  as  he  quaintly  told  a  sympathetic 
friend,  "  like  the  boy  that  stumped  his  toe.  —  It  hurt 
too  bad  to  laugh  and  he  was  too  big  to  cry."  M  The  toe 


ii4      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

had,  on  this  occasion,  not  been  seriously  injured,  however, 
for  the  big  boy  was  still  in  the  running  with  the  little  one. 
Their  names  were  thenceforward  linked  together  in  the 
public  mind.  Those  who  had  watched  the  contest  atten- 
tively agreed,  for  the  most  part,  that  Lincoln's  failure  had 
been  as  brilliant  as  Douglas's  success.  While  the  Senator 
had  merely  maintained  the  great  prestige  already  estab- 
lished by  him,  throughout  the  land,  his  comparatively  un- 
known opponent  had  leaped  at  one  bound,  as  it  were,  into 
a  national  reputation.  Some  observers,  in  fact,  undazzled 
by  the  Bengal  lights  of  victory,  recognized  even  then, 
what  later  judgment  has  confirmed,  that  the  foremost 
campaigner  of  the  Democracy  had  met  his  master. 

After  the  conflict,  Lincoln  turned  his  attention  again 
to  his  somewhat  neglected  private  affairs.  Urgent  though 
these  were,  they  did  not  —  it  is  interesting  to  note  —  take 
his  thoughts  from  the  doctrines  that  he  had  combated,  or 
from  the  man  who  had  sought  to  uphold  them.  Douglas 
and  "  Douglasism,"  to  use  Lincoln's  own  word,  were  still 
at  every  turn  the  joint  objects  of  his  attacks.  For,  strange 
to  relate,  he  deemed  it  necessary  to  oppose  the  Democratic 
leader  anew,  within,  as  well  as  outside  of,  the  Republican 
ranks.  Some  members  of  the  party,  notwithstanding  what 
the  recent  discussions  had  disclosed,  persisted  in  the  hope 
that  the  organization  might  yet  march  to  power  under  the 
Standard  of  the  victorious  Senator.  Even  a  few  of  Lin- 
coln's friends,  for  a  brief  period  after  his  defeat,  enter- 
tained this  idea ;  but  their  leader  —  needless  to  say —  lost 
no  opportunity  to  counteract  it.  "  Let  the  Republican 
Party  of  Illinois  dally  with  Judge  Douglas,"  said  he, 
speaking  at  Chicago,  in  the  spring  of  1859.  "  Let  them 
fall  in  behind  him  and  make  him  their  candidate,  and 
they  do  not  absorb  him  —  he  absorbs  them.  They  would 
come  out  at  the  end  all  Douglas  men,  all  claimed  by  him 
as  having  endorsed  every  one  of  his  doctrines  upon  the 
great  subject  with  which  the  whole  nation  is  engaged  at 
this  hour."70  As  late  as  the  midsummer  of  that  year, 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND   LITTLE         115 

we  find  the  speaker  expressing  uneasiness  at  seeing  his 
"  friends,  leaning  toward  *  popular  sovereignty  '  "  and 
toward  its  author,  "  the  most  dangerous  enemy  of  Lib- 
erty because  the  most  insidious  one." 71  These  warnings 
were  reenforced  by  the  conduct  of  the  Senator  himself. 
That  wily  politician,  as  soon  as  he  had  secured  his  reelec- 
tion, turned  toward  the  South  to  regain  the  pro-slavery 
support  which  he  had  alienated  at  Freeport.  His  public 
utterances,  about  this  time,  particularly  the  speeches  made 
on  a  southern  tour  that  closely  followed  the  debates,  reveal 
how  disastrous,  if  not  fatal,  his  leadership  might  have  been 
to  the  high  aims  of  the  Republican  Party.  But  this  peril 
passed  over,  with  the  approach  of  the  fall  elections,  when 
party  lines  were  again  so  sharply  drawn  that  Lincoln  and 
Douglas  found  themselves,  as  usual,  in  opposing  camps. 

At  the  request  of  the  Ohio  Democrats,  Douglas  visited 
that  State,  in  September,  1859,  to  help  them  elect  their 
local  ticket.  Similar  invitations,  addressed  to  Lincoln  from 
various  quarters  in  the  North,  had  been  declined ;  but, 
when  the  Buckeye  Republicans  asked  him  to  come  and 
answer  the  speeches  of  this  man  who  was  regarded  as  his 
particular  antagonist,  he  complied.  Following  Douglas,  by 
a  few  days,  at  Columbus  and  at  Cincinnati,  respectively, 
he  made  two  effective  speeches.  They  dealt  not  solely 
with  what  had  been  said  at  those  places,  but  indeed,  with 
most,  if  not  all,  of  the  important  arguments  made  by  the 
Democratic  leader  in  his  addresses  and  his  contributions 
to  the  press  since  the  debates.  For  now,  more  than  ever, 
Lincoln  tenaciously  stuck  to  Douglas.  No  public  word  or 
act  of  the  Senator  escaped  the  notice  of  his  indefatigable 
rival.  After  the  Ohio  election,  which  resulted  in  favor  of 
the  Republicans,  Lincoln  journeyed  to  Kansas.  There  as 
elsewhere,  to  judge  from  the  reports  of  his  speeches, — • 
or  rather  from  the  fragments  of  several  that  have  been 
preserved, —  "popular  sovereignty,"  together  with  the  ex- 
pounder of  the  doctrine,  was  still  uppermost  in  his  mind. 
And  a  few  weeks  thereafter,  when  he  delivered  at  Cooper 


n6      LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

Institute,  in  New  York,  the  most  elaborate  address  of  his 
life,  that  same  subject  furnished  a  theme,  and  one  of  Doug- 
las's speeches,  a  text.  The  oration  at  the  metropolis  was, 
in  fact,  a  grand  summing  up  of  the  controversy  opened  by 
Lincoln,  as  we  have  seen,  somewhat  over  twenty  months 
before,  in  the  little  western  Capital.  By  a  sort  of  political 
miracle,  the  arena  in  which  the  contestants  then  faced 
each  other  had,  with  unexampled  rapidity,  grown  until  it 
became  coextensive  with  the  entire  country.  A  nation  had 
been  watching  the  men  and  weighing  the  merits  of  their 
quarrel.  The  time  for  a  final  decision  between  them  was 
almost  at  hand. 

When  the  Republican  National  Convention  met  at 
Chicago,  in  May,  1860,  it  passed  over  Seward,  Chase,  and 
other  recognized  leaders,  who  sought  the  presidency,  to 
nominate  Lincoln.  This  choice,  though  the  causes  and 
considerations  which  led  to  it  were  manifold,  had  its  basis 
primarily  on  the  record  made  by  him  in  the  fight  against 
Douglas.  For,  sharp  as  had  been  that  conflict  between 
the  two  men,  a  still  sharper  one,  to  all  appearances,  im- 
pended between  their  political  supporters.  The  Repub- 
licans and  the  northern  Democrats,  entering  upon  the 
most  momentous  presidential  campaign  of  our  history,  had 
embodied  in  their  respective  platforms  the  principles  at 
issue  throughout  the  debates.  Consequently,  when  they 
came  to  select  candidates  who  were  to  stand  upon  these 
platforms,  they  naturally  regarded  the  debaters  them- 
selves as,  in  one  important  sense  at  least,  their  logical 
standard-bearers.  So  Lincoln  was  named  at  Chicago,  and 
five  weeks  later,  the  Democratic  National  Convention  at 
Baltimore  nominated  Douglas. 

But  the  second  nomination  was  relatively  a  very  differ- 
ent affair  from  the  first.  Lincoln  received  the  unanimous 
vote  of  his  party ;  Douglas  was  chosen  by  a  mere  rump. 
The  Democracy  had  split  across  its  middle,  leaving  the 
Senator  from  Illinois  at  the  head  of  the  northern  half, 
and  face  to  face  with  the  fate  foreseen  by  his  competitor 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND   LITTLE         117 

at  Freeport.  In  the  debate  at  that  place,  Douglas,  as  will 
be  remembered,  had  been  entrapped  into  an  out-and-out 
declaration  of  his  attitude  toward  slavery  in  the  Territo- 
ries. "  It  matters  not,"  he  had  said,  answering  Lincoln's 
question,  "  what  way  the  Supreme  Court  may  hereafter 
decide  as  to  the  abstract  question  whether  slavery  may  or 
may  not  go  into  a  Territory  under  the  Constitution,  the 
people  have  the  lawful  means  to  introduce  it  or  exclude 
it  as  they  please,  for  the  reason  that  slavery  cannot  exist 
a  day  or  an  hour  anywhere,  unless  it  is  supported  by  local 
police  regulations.  Those  police  regulations  can  only  be 
established  by  the  local  legislature ;  and  if  the  people  are 
opposed  to  slavery,  they  will  elect  representatives  to  that 
body  who  will  by  unfriendly  legislation  effectually  pre- 
vent the  introduction  of  it  into  their  midst."  72  This  rare 
sophism,  •*  as  thin,"  to  use  a  Lincolnian  illustration,  "  as 
the  homeopathic  soup  that  was  made  by  boiling  the  shadow 
of  a  pigeon  that  had  been  starved  to  death,"  had  never- 
theless served  Douglas's  purpose  with  the  Democrats  of 
Illinois.  But  how  had  it  affected  his  popularity  with  the 
party  at  large,  and,  above  all,  would  it,  as  Lincoln  had 
predicted,  cost  him  the  presidency  ? 

The  applause  of  the  Senator's  constituents  over  the 
subterfuge  of  "  unfriendly  legislation  "  had  not  subsided 
before  a  storrn  of  protest  arose  in  the  South.  Denuncia- 
tions of  Douglas  and  his  "  Freeport  heresy,"  so-called, 
filled  the  pro-slavery  press  ;  adherents  of  Buchanan,  point- 
ing to  the  obnoxious  avowal  as  conclusive  evidence  of 
apostasy,  assailed  him  in  rapidly  increasing  numbers,  and, 
if  possible,  more  bitterly  than  ever ;  while  those  of  the 
southern  leaders  who  might  have  overlooked  his  quarrel 
with  the  administration  also  raised  their  voices  in  con- 
demnation of  what  they  regarded  as  a  betrayal  of  their 
dearest  interests.  In  vain  had  Douglas  hurried  South, 
after  the  debate,  with  speeches  that  commended  slavery. 
Fruitless  were  the  addresses  and  pamphlets  in  which  he 
had  sought  to  defend  his  position.  To  no  purpose  had  it 


n8       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

been  pointed  out  that  he  was  pursuing  the  only  course  by 
which  the  Democratic  Party  could  hope  for  success  in  the 
Free  States.  "  His  explanations  explanatory  of  explana- 
tions explained,"  as  Lincoln  felicitously  described  them, 
appeared  indeed  to  be  "  interminable  "  ;  yet  all  without 
avail.  By  that  answer  at  Freeport,  —  a  formal  declara- 
tion at  last  of  theories  previously  hinted  at,  —  Douglas 
had  destroyed  what  remained  of  his  southern  prestige. 
The  slaveholders  could  have  forgiven  much  in  a  man  who 
throughout  his  entire  career,  more  efficiently  than  any 
other  northern  politician,  had  fetched  and  carried  for 
them  ;  but  this  shifty  doctrine,  proclaiming  "  the  institu- 
tion "  at  the  mercy  of  local  laws,  put  forth  as  it  was,  on 
the  eve  of  their  last  desperate  civil  campaign,  had  marked 
him  for  sacrifice.  Hence  the  southern  delegates  to  the 
Democratic  National  Convention  were  resolved  —  cost 
what  it  might  —  upon  the  overthrow  of  their  once  service- 
able champion.  His  northern  supporters,  on  the  other 
hand,  were  as  determined  to  make  him  their  candidate. 
After  a  number  of  stormy  sessions,  in  which  the  two  fac- 
tions drew  farther  and  farther  apart,  the  members  from 
the  "  cotton  States,"  together  with  their  sympathizers 
from  other  sections,  seceded  to  organize  the  pro-slavery 
convention  that  nominated  John  C.  Breckinridge ;  and 
what  was  left  of  the  National  Convention  chose  Douglas 
to  lead  its  forlorn  hope. 

So  the  "  Little  Giant "  and  the  big  one  entered  upon 
what  proved  to  be  their  last  contest.  Douglas  was  heavily 
handicapped.  His  support  in  the  South,  as  if  it  had  not 
been  sufficiently  reduced  by  the  disruption  of  the  Demo- 
cratic Party  and  the  candidacy  of  Breckinridge,  was  still 
further  impaired  by  the  nomination,  on  a  fourth  ticket, 
of  John  Bell  of  Tennessee.  Yet  Douglas  was  game.  Dis- 
regarding the  wisdom  and  good  taste  that  have,  with  rare 
exceptions,  restrained  presidential  candidates  from  advo- 
cating their  own  election,  he  threw  himself  into  the  fight 
with  all  the  energy  which  had  characterized  his  previous 


GIANTS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE         119 

campaigns.  In  an  extensive  tour  through  the  country,  he 
made  many  speeches,  striking  now  at  this  competitor,  now 
at  that.  His  old  opponent,  however,  for  the  first  time  in 
the  history  of  their  rivalry,  was  mute.  Lincoln's  cause 
was  advocated  by  capable  men  enough,  yet  it  must  have 
irked  him  to  remain  at  home  inactive  while  Douglas, 
traveling  from  city  to  city,  continued  to  state  his  side  of 
their  debate.  The  Democratic  leader,  in  truth,  presented 
no  new  arguments,  and  his  old  ones  the  Republican  had, 
over  and  over  again,  refuted.  Popular  Sovereignty  and  the 
Freeport  Doctrine  —  twin  nostrums  of  an  unscrupulous 
political  quack  —  had,  thanks  to  Lincoln,  been  exposed  in 
all  their  futility.  The  time  for  shifts  and  delusions  had 
passed.  Symptoms  of  trouble  multiplied  on  every  hand. 
Columbia  was  sick  —  sick  unto  death.  A  black  fever  was 
upon  her.  Heroic  treatment  alone  might  save  her.  In 
this  extremity,  which  of  the  two  men  —  for  the  choice 
really  lay  between  them  —  would  the  nation  trust  ?  The 
decision  rested  with  the  Northern  States.  Small  wonder 
that,  with  a  single  exception,  they  turned  from  the  char- 
latan and  placed  themselves  in  the  hands  of  the  master 
who  had  discredited  him.  Lincoln  was  elected.  He  led 
Douglas,  at  the  polls,  by  about  five  hundred  thousand 
votes  ;  and  in  the  Electoral  College,  his  ballots  were  180  to 
Douglas's  12.73  What  the  result  might  have  been  had  the 
candidate  of  the  northern  Democrats  received  the  nom- 
ination of  a  united  party,  with  but  Lincoln  and  himself 
in  the  field,  is,  of  course,  purely  a  matter  for  speculation. 
The  votes  that  were  cast  for  Breckinridge  and  Bell,  to- 
gether with  his  own,  would  have  given  Douglas  a  majority 
on  popular  ballot ;  yet  even  so,  his  total  from  the  electors 
would  have  been  only  123,  and  whether  or  not  he  could 
have  improved  upon  that  figure,  in  a  single-handed  can- 
vass against  Lincoln,  is  beyond  reasonable  conjecture.  In 
any  event,  defeated,  North  and  South,  he  had  ceased  to 
be  a  vital  factor  in  political  calculations.  All  eyes  were 
turned  upon  his  successful  rival ;  for  the  long  race  be- 


iio      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

tween  Lincoln  and  Douglas  was  finished,  and  Lincoln 
had  won. 

When  the  President-elect,  on  inauguration  day,  stepped 
out  upon  the  platform  that  had  been  erected  in  front  of 
the  eastern  portico  of  the  capitol,  he  found  the  senior  Sen- 
ator from  Illinois  among  the  distinguished  men  who  sat 
awaiting  him.  Mr.  Lincoln,  as  if  to  add  to  the  novelty  of 
his  situation,  was  dressed  in  fine  clothes,  of  which,  for  the 
moment,  he  appeared  to  be  all  too  conscious.  In  one  hand 
he  held  a  new  silk  hat ;  in  the  other,  a  gold-headed  cane. 
What  to  do  with  them  perplexed  him.  After  some  hesi- 
tation, he  put  the  cane  into  a  corner ;  but  he  could  find 
no  place  for  the  hat,  which  he  evidently  was  unwilling 
to  lay  on  the  rough  board  floor.  As  he  stood  there  in 
embarrassment,  with  the  waiting  multitude  looking  up 
curiously  at  him,  his  old  rival  came  to  his  rescue.  Tak- 
ing the  precious  hat  from  its  owner's  hand,  Douglas  held 
it,  while  Lincoln  took  the  oath  of  office  and  delivered 
his  inaugural  address.74  The  incident,  simple  in  itself, 
forms  a  dramatic  climax  to  the  lifelong  competition 
between  them.  As  Lincoln  stands  forth  crowned  with 
the  highest  honors  to  which  their  conflicting  ambitions 
had  aspired,  Douglas,  in  the  background,  humbly  holds 
the  victor's  hat. 


CHAPTEE  IV 
THE  POWER  BEHIND  THE  THRONE 

ON  the  first  roll-call  at  the  Republican  National  Conven- 
tion of  1860,  no  less  than  a  dozen  men  received  votes  for 
the  presidential  nomination.1  Among  the  distinguished 
party  leaders  and  "  favorite  sons  "  thus  honored,  by  far 
the  most  prominent,  at  the  time,  was  William  Henry 
Seward  of  New  York.  So  greatly  did  he  tower  above  all 
other  aspirants  that  the  keenest  observers  on  the  ground 
regarded  his  selection  as  a  foregone  conclusion.  To  him, 
perhaps,  more  than  to  any  other  member  of  the  young 
organization  was  due  the  cohesion  of  its  inharmonious 
elements ; 2  to  him  those  elements  owed  the  most  effectual 
expression  of  their  common  principles ;  and  to  him  many 
of  their  representatives,  as  they  gathered  in  convention 
at  the  opening  of  the  great  campaign,  naturally  looked  for 
leadership. 

Seward's  brilliant  career,  extending  over  thirty  years 
of  political  life,  no  less  than  his  services  to  the  new  party, 
had  fairly  earned  for  him  this  distinction.  Two  terms 
in  the  upper  chamber  of  the  New  York  legislature,  an 
equal  period  as  Governor  of  that  most  difficult  of  com- 
monwealths, and  two  terms  —  all  but  completed  —  in  the 
United  States  Senate,  had  afforded  him  abundant  oppor- 
tunities for  displaying  executive  and  legislative  talents  of 
a  high  order.  As  a  politician,  he  had  won  his  spurs  lead- 
ing a  minority  in  the  New  York  Senate,  during  the  days 
of  the  Anti-Masonic  uprising;  and  when  the  Anti-Masons 
became  Whigs,  a  few  years  thereafter,  his  capabilities 
for  generalship  had  forthwith  been  recognized  by  the  new 
associates,  in  a  nomination  to  the  governorship  of  his 


122      LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

State.  Though  defeated  in  the  canvass  which  followed, 
he  had,  in  the  next  election,  as  a  candidate  for  the  same 
office,  won  a  splendid  victory  over  the  so-called  Albany 
Regency  —  a  powerful  Democratic  clique  that  had  long 
controlled  political  affairs.  This  success  had  a  signifi- 
cance more  than  local.  It  had  carried  Seward,  before  his 
thirty-ninth  birthday,  into  the  front  rank  of  party  lead- 
ers —  an  eminence  that  he  was  destined  to  maintain  for 
many  years.  Entering  the  United  States  Senate  amidst 
the  stirring  debates  on  the  Compromise  of  1850,  he  had 
taken  advanced  ground  against  the  extension  of  slavery ; 
and,  in  the  fierce  parliamentary  conflicts  to  ensue,  he  had 
borne  more  than  his  share  of  southern  abuse.  With  the 
disfavor  of  the  South,  however,  had  kept  pace  the  ap- 
proval of  the  North,  where  a  following,  influential,  large, 
and  steadily  increasing,  had  looked  to  him,  as  to  an  oracle, 
for  political  guidance.  When  this  section  had  merged  its 
fortunes  with  those  of  the  other  anti-slavery  factions  to 
form  the  Republican  Party,  our  Whig  Senator  from  New 
York  had  been  regarded  generally  throughout  the  country 
as  the  foremost  champion  of  the  new  cause. 

The  day  on  which  the  Convention  met  at  Chicago,  Seward 
entered  upon  his  sixtieth  year.  He  was  in  his  intellectual 
prime,  however,  and  no  other  aspirant  to  the  presidency 
appeared  to  be  so  amply  qualified  for  the  office.  A  college- 
bred  man,  his  education  had  taken  the  direction  of  gen- 
eral culture  rather  than  of  profound  learning.  With  habits 
of  thought  essentially  philosophical  was  combined  a  grasp 
of  practical  matters  that  his  long  experience  of  public  men 
and  events  could  alone  have  developed.  Seldom  brilliant, 
but  usually  bright,  he  understood  in  a  remarkable  degree 
how  to  make  the  most  of  his  acquirements,  and,  for  that 
matter,  of  other  people's  as  well.  When  his  prolific  mind 
failed  to  supply  a  needed  thought  or  expedient,  he  adopted 
that  of  another  so  skilfully  as  to  make  it  seem  his  own. 
No  labor  was  too  exacting  for  his  industry ;  no  obstacle 
could  baffle  his  perseverance.  A  man  "  of  cheerful  yester- 


POWER  BEHIND   THE   THRONE    123 

days  and  confident  to-morrows "  —  in  him,  more  than 
in  any  other  statesman  of  his  times,  the  ardent  hopeful- 
ness of  youth  blended  with  the  wisdom  of  mature  years. 
An  untiring  student,  moreover,  of  history  and  litera- 
ture, a  lawyer  of  uncommon  ability,  and  a  thinker  who 
lacked  neither  vigor  nor  imagination,  he  expressed  him- 
self, whether  by  tongue  or  pen,  with  equal  felicity  and 
force.  As  an  orator,  Seward  ranked  below  the  great 
triad  —  Webster,  Clay,  and  Calhoun.  He  had  neither 
their  genius  nor  their  commanding  presence.  In  his 
slight  stature,  harsh  voice,  awkward  gesture,  and  didactic 
manner  were  lacking  the  personal  charm  that  contributed 
not  a  little  to  their  triumphs  ;  yet  his  thoughtful,  unim- 
passioned  speeches  carried  conviction  as  often,  perhaps, 
as  did  their  best  efforts.  Rising  above  the  personalities 
which  jangled  the  debates  of  the  day,  he  maintained  a 
dignity  and  amiability  of  temper  that  no  provocation 
could  disturb.  To  supporters,  as  well  as  to  opponents, 
he  seemed  to  say :  — 

"Be  calm  in  arguing;  for  fierceness  makes 
Error  a  fault,  and  truth  discourtesy." 

In  his  personal  intercourse  with  people  Seward's  courtly 
manners,  his  tact,  and  his  social  graces  were  not  unim- 
portant factors  in  the  multiplication  of  his  political 
friends.  For,  whatever  else  he  may  have  been,  he  was 
still  the  politician.  A  party  man,  he  believed  that  he 
could  best  attain  his  ends  within  one  of  the  two  great  or- 
ganizations that  usually  divide  the  country ;  but,  when  vital 
principles  were  at  stake,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  express, 
in  lofty  periods,  his  own  views,  however  much  they  might 
differ  from  those  of  his  associates.  In  the  actual  prac- 
tice, nevertheless,  of  political  strategy,  he  was  not  above 
compromises  or  expedients  which  gave  rise  to  charges  of 
insincerity  and  time-serving.  Though  an  admirer  of  John 
Quincy  Adams  to  the  point  of  veneration,  he  maintained 
for  many  years  a  close  political  association  with  Thurlow 
Weed.  This  was  one  of  the  enigmas  in  the  man's  com- 


124      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

plex  character.  That  Seward's  acts,  now  and  then,  fell 
considerably  below  his  ideals,  even  staunch  admirers  could 
not  deny ;  but  they  pointed  out  the  limitations  under 
which,  as  a  party  leader,  he  had  to  labor,  and  they  held 
that  these  shortcomings  were  more  than  offset  by  repeated 
manifestations  of  patriotic  statesmanship. 

This  outline  may  afford  some  conception  of  the  man  who, 
having  left  his  seat  in  the  Senate  for  his  home  at  Auburn, 
sat  among  his  friends  while  the  Republican  Convention 
was  voting,  and  awaited  with  smiling  confidence  the  news 
of  his  nomination.  That  news,  as  we  know,  never  came. 
Instead  of  it,  the  wires  brought  the  announcement  of 
his  defeat  and  of  Abraham  Lincoln's  selection,  on  the 
third  ballot.  To  explain  this  destruction  of  Seward's 
hopes,  contemporary  historians  have  assigned  widely  dif- 
ferent causes.  His  radical  utterances  on  the  slavery 
question,  particularly  the  speeches  in  which  he  fore- 
shadowed the  "  irrepressible  conflict "  and  declared  that 
there  was  "  a  higher  law  than  the  Constitution  " ;  his  early 
indulgence  toward  the  Catholics  when  they  had  asked 
to  have  the  New  York  school  fund  divided,  together  with 
his  uncompromising  opposition  to  the  so-called  American 
principles  of  the  old  Know-Nothings ;  their  consequent 
hostility  to  him,  in  considerable  numbers,  especially 
throughout  the  pivotal  States  of  Pennsylvania  and  Indi- 
ana ;  his  uniform  support  of  liberal  public  expenditures 
which  had  led  to  extravagance  —  even  corruption  —  on  the 
part  of  political  associates  less  scrupulous  than  himself; 
the  ill-repute  of  these  friends,  who,  under  the  boss-rule  of 
Thurlow  Weed,  Seward's  inseparable  partner,  had  organ- 
ized at  Albany  the  most  vicious  lobby  of  the  day ;  the 
antagonism  of  Horace  Greeley,  for  many  years  devoted  to 
Seward's  political  fortunes,  but  latterly  embittered  against 
him  by  feelings  of  wounded  vanity,  —  each  of  these  things 
has  been  credited  with  the  overthrow  of  the  New  York 
Senator  in  the  Convention.  It  would  be  nearer  the  truth 
to  say  that  all  contributed  their  share  toward  the  creation 


POWER   BEHIND  THE  THRONE     125 

of  the  opposition  which,  having  faced  Seward's  plurality 
with  but  little  cooperation  at  the  outset,  finally  combined 
the  required  majority  vote  in  support  of  his  strongest 
competitor. 

What  causes  and  considerations  of  a  positive  character 
led  to  Lincoln's  selection  need  not  be  considered  here.  He 
owed  the  nomination,  in  the  opinion  of  the  Seward  men, 
to  his  weakness  rather  than  to  his  strength.  Their  first 
outbursts  of  indignation  characterized  the  affair  as  a  tri- 
umph of  unobjectionable  mediocrity  over  greatness  which 
had,  of  necessity,  during  a  long  series  of  public  services, 
raised  up  many  enemies  to  itself.  They  recalled  that  other 
National  Conventions  had  sacrificed  their  most  eminent 
leaders  —  as  Webster  had  remarked,  twelve  years  before, 
on  a  similar  occasion  —  to  the  "  sagacious,  wise,  far-seeing 
doctrine  of  availability  "  ;  but  they  could  not,  for  all  that, 
bring  themselves  at  once  to  regard  the  overthrow  of  their 
idol  with  anything  approaching  to  acquiescence.3  A  spirit 
of  bitter  protest  pervaded  the  visits,  letters,  and  newspa- 
per comments  which  poured  in  upon  Seward,  from  every 
direction.  Their  tenor  may  be  inferred  from  what  the  Re- 
publican Central  Committee  of  his  own  State  addressed 
to  him  the  day  after  the  nomination  had  been  made. 

"  The  result  of  the  Chicago  Convention,"  wrote  the  Com- 
mittee, "  has  been  more  than  a  surprise  to  the  Republi- 
cans of  New  York.  That  you  who  have  been  the  earliest 
defender  of  Republican  principles — the  acknowledged 
head  and  leader  of  the  party,  who  have  given  direction  to 
its  movements  and  form  and  substance  to  its  acts  —  that 
you  should  have  been  put  aside  upon  the  narrow  ground 
of  expediency,  we  can  hardly  realize  or  believe.  What- 
ever the  decision  of  this,  or  a  hundred  other  conventions, 
we  recognize  in  you  the  real  leader  of  the  Republican 
Party  ;  and  the  citizens  of  every  State  and  of  all  creeds 
and  parties,  and  the  history  of  our  country  will  confirm 
this  judgment."  4 

To  this  Seward  replied :  — 


126      LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

"  I  find  in  the  resolutions  of  the  Convention  a  platform 
as  satisfactory  to  me  as  if  it  had  been  framed  with  my 
own  hands ;  and  in  the  candidates  adopted  by  it,  emi- 
nent and  able  Republicans  with  whom  I  have  cordially 
cooperated  in  maintaining  the  principles  embodied  in 
that  excellent  creed.  I  cheerfully  give  them  a  sincere  and 
earnest  support." 5 

Similar  sentiments  were  repeatedly  expressed  to  his 
disconsolate  friends,  upon  whom  he  urged  the  duty  of  fore- 
going their  personal  desires  for  the  sake  of  the  great  cause. 
He,  himself,  magnanimously  setting  the  example,  engaged 
in  the  canvass  with  an  energy  and  an  eloquence  that  con- 
tributed not  a  little  to  its  successful  issue.  Here  was  a 
general  who  did  not  sulk  in  his  tent,  while  the  war  was 
on,  even  though  the  commander  had  deprived  him  of  what 
so  many  told  him  and  of  what  he  himself  believed  to  be  his 
due.  Seward  bore  himself,  during  those  trying  times,  with 
rare  dignity.  Nevertheless,  beneath  his  calm  demeanor 
were  hidden  feelings  of  keen  disappointment  and  humili- 
ation —  how  keen,  only  those  nearest  to  him  could  guess. 
When,  in  a  letter  to  his  wife,  he  described  himself  as  "  a 
leader  deposed  by  my  own  party  in  the  hour  of  organiza- 
tion for  decisive  battle,"  he  compressed  into  a  single 
phrase  his  sense  of  the  injustice  done  him.6  It  is  not  sur- 
prising, therefore,  that  after  the  battle  had  been  fought 
and  the  victory  won,  he  should  have  looked  upon  Abraham 
Lincoln  as  wearing  honors  that  belonged,  of  right,  to 
William  H.  Seward. 

A  similar  notion  was  entertained  by  the  President-elect, 
himself.  He  had,  for  some  time  before  the  Convention, 
shared  the  prevailing  opinion  that  the  Senator  from  New 
York  stood  in  the  front  rank  of  preferment.  When, 
shortly  after  the  debates  of  1858,  Jesse  W.  Fell,  a  politi- 
cian of  local  prominence,  had  urged  Lincoln  to  seek  the 
nomination,  he  had  replied  :  — 

"Oh,  Fell,  what's  the  use  of  talking  of  me  for  the 
presidency,  whilst  we  have  such  men  as  Seward,  Chase, 


POWER  BEHIND   THE   THRONE     127 

and  others,  who  are  so  much  better  known  to  the  people, 
and  whose  names  are  so  intimately  associated  with  the 
principles  of  the  Republican  Party  ?  Everybody  knows 
them ;  nobody,  scarcely,  outside  of  Illinois,  knows  me. 
Besides,  is  it  not,  as  a  matter  of  justice,  due  to  such  men, 
who  have  carried  the  movement  forward  to  its  present 
status,  in  spite  of  fearful  opposition,  personal  abuse,  and 
hard  names  ?  I  really  think  so."  7 

Not  so,  however,  thought  Fell  and  some  of  the  speaker's 
other  friends ;  for  they  persisted  in  their  purpose  until 
they  succeeded  in  getting  his  consent  to  the  steps  that  led 
to  his  nomination. 

Even  after  the  Chicago  Convention  had  made  Lincoln 
the  Republican  standard-bearer,  he  continued  to  speak  of 
Seward  as  "  the  generally  recognized  leader  "  of  the  party. 
In  truth,  not  many  years  had  elapsed  since  the  successful 
candidate  had  described  himself  to  be  "  something  of  a 
Seward  Whig  "  ; 8  and,  on  the  very  day  of  his  nomination,9 
he  determined,  if  elected,  to  give  his  powerful  competitor 
the  first  portfolio  in  his  cabinet.10  Carrying  out  this  reso- 
lution a  month  after  the  election,  Lincoln  sent  Seward, 
with  the  formal  tender  of  the  office,  a  confidential  letter, 
as  sincere  as  it  was  deferential.  Some  assurance  of  the 
writer's  good  faith  seemed  to  be  in  order,  because  of  the 
newspaper  rumors  that  the  appointment  was  to  be  prof- 
fered as  a  compliment,  with  the  expectation  that  it  would 
be  declined. 

"  I  now  offer  you  the  place,"  wrote  the  President-elect, 
"  in  the  hope  that  you  will  accept  it,  and  with  the  belief 
that  your  position  in  the  public  eye,  your  integrity,  ability, 
learning,  and  great  experience,  all  combine  to  render  it 
an  appointment  preeminently  fit  to  be  made."  " 

Seward  accepted,  though  not  without  misgivings.  His 
partner,  Weed,  after  two  days  of  consultation  with  Mr. 
Lincoln  at  Springfield,  had  returned  home  with  most 
unsatisfactory  conclusions  as  to  the  probable  composition 
of  the  cabinet.  It  was  to  include,  he  inferred,  Messrs. 


128       LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

Seward,  Bates,  Smith,12  Chase,  Cameron,  Blair,  and 
Welles.  The  first  three  had  been  Whigs,  and  the  last 
four  might  be  classified  as  former  Democrats. 

"  I  inquired,"  reports  Weed,  "  whether,  in  the  shape 
which  the  question  was  taking,  it  was  just  or  wise  to  con- 
cede so  many  seats  in  the  cabinet  to  the  Democratic  ele- 
ment in  the  Republican  Party.  He  replied  that  as  a  Whig 
he  thought  he  could  afford  to  be  liberal  to  a  section  of  the 
Republican  Party,  without  whose  votes  he  could  not  have 
been  elected.  I  admitted  the  justice  and  wisdom  of  this, 
adding  that  in  arranging  and  adjusting  questions  of 
place  and  patronage  in  our  State  we  had  acted  in  that 
spirit,  but  that  I  doubted  both  the  justice  and  the  wis- 
dom, in  inaugurating  his  administration,  of  giving  to  a 
minority  of  the  Republican  Party  a  majority  in  his  cabi- 
net. I  added  that  the  National  Convention  indicated 
unmistakably  the  sentiment  of  its  constituency  by  nomi- 
nating for  President  a  candidate  with  Whig  antecedents, 
while  its  nominee  for  Vice-President  had  been  for  many 
years  a  Democratic  representative  in  Congress.  '  But,' 
said  Mr.  Lincoln,  '  why  do  you  assume  that  we  are  giving 
that  section  of  our  party  a  majority  in  the  cabinet  ? '  I 
replied  that  if  Messrs.  Chase,  Cameron,  Welles,  and 
Blair  should  be  designated,  the  cabinet  would  stand  four 
to  three.  *  You  seem  to  forget  that  /  expect  to  be  there  ; 
and  counting  me  as  one,  you  see  how  nicely  the  cabinet 
would  be  balanced  and  ballasted.' "  13 

This  view  of  the  matter  failed  to  reassure  Seward's 
friends.  They  were  not  disposed  to  accept  the  President- 
elect as  a  very  heavy  make-weight.  What  power,  moreover, 
to  keep  his  craft  trimmed  in  the  maelstrom  of  Washing- 
ton politics,  at  that  particularly  threatening  period,  could 
they  expect  from  an  untried  man  who,  to  use  the  language 
of  one  of  his  biographers,  "  had  just  been  so  freakishly 
picked  out  of  a  frontier  town  to  take  charge  of  the  des- 
tinies of  the  United  States  "  ?  "  His  seeming  inefficiency 
to  meet  the  approaching  crisis  should  have  led  him,  they 


POWER  BEHIND   THE  THRONE     129 

thought,  to  make  up  his  cabinet  under  the  advice  of  the 
New  York  statesman,  — 

"  That  sacred  seer,  whose  comprehensive  view 
The  past,  the  present,  and  the  future  knew." 

Aided  by  harmonious  assistants,  Seward  might  then  be 
relied  on,  said  his  admirers,  to  save  the  administration, 
and  perhaps  the  country,  from  disaster.  As  the  virtual, 
if  not  the  nominal  head  of  the  new  government,  why 
should  not  the  Secretary  of  State,  like  the  British  Prime 
Minister,  be  allowed  to  choose  his  own  colleagues  and  to 
assign  them  their  respective  places?  It  was  even  urged 
upon  Mr.  Lincoln  that  he  ought  to  visit  Auburn  and  con- 
sult the  great  man's  wishes ;  but,  strange  to  relate,  the 
President-elect  did  not  do  so. 

These  efforts  to  secure  what  was  termed  a  Seward 
cabinet  were  redoubled  after  the  prospective  Secretary 
of  State  had  accepted  the  portfolio.  His  political  associ- 
ates earnestly  opposed  the  appointment  of  Messrs.  Blair 
and  Welles,  not  only  because  they  had  been  Democrats, 
but  also  on  account  of  their  personal  antagonism  to  him. 
Even  more  objectionable  to  the  Seward  faction,  however, 
than  these  two  men,  was  Mr.  Chase.  His  incompatibility 
with  the  Whig  leader  was  so  pronounced  that  one  or  the 
other,  it  was  intimated  to  the  President-elect,  should  be 
omitted  from  the  cabinet.  And  all  this  time  Seward's 
campaign  against  Chase,  it  should  be  said,  was  not  more 
aggressive  than  that  of  Chase  against  Seward.  Mr.  Lin- 
coln listened  to  what  was  said  on  both  sides,  but  he  made 
none  of  the  desired  changes.  Indeed,  it  is  a  highly  sig- 
nificant fact  that,  despite  this  and  other  equally  bitter 
partisan  struggles  over  the  cabinet,  to  say  nothing  of  cer- 
tain contemplated  changes,  the  list  when  he  arrived  in 
Washington  was  essentially  what  he  had  planned  on  the 
night  of  his  election.15  Still  the  Seward  men  persevered. 
A  large  delegation  of  them  waited  upon  the  President- 
elect, two  days  before  the  inauguration,  to  urge  the  ex- 
clusion of  Chase.  His  faults  and  Seward's  virtues  having 


130      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

been  dwelt  upon  at  length,  they  announced  as  an  ultima- 
tum, what  had  previously  been  implied,  that  their  leader 
would  not  sit  in  council  with  him.  Whether  or  not  Mr. 
Lincoln  was  prepared  for  this  may  be  inferred  from  his 
answer,  shortly  before,  to  a  friend  who  inquired  about  a 
rumored  change  in  the  list. 

"  Judd,"  said  he,  "  when  that  slate  breaks  again,  it  will 
break  at  the  top."  16 

Nevertheless,  the  attitude  of  the  delegation  appeared 
greatly  to  distress  him.  He  expressed  his  esteem  for  both 
men,  and  said  that  the  country  wanted  the  hearty  coopera- 
tion of  all  good  citizens,  without  regard  to  sections.  Here 
there  was  an  ominous  pause.  Then,  taking  a  paper  out  of 
a  table-drawer,  he  continued :  — 

"  I  had  written  out  my  choice  and  selection  of  members 
for  the  cabinet  after  most  careful  and  deliberate  consid- 
eration, and  now  you  are  here  to  tell  me  I  must  break  the 
slate  and  begin  the  thing  all  over  again." 

He  had  hoped,  he  said,  to  have  Mr.  Seward  as  his  Sec- 
retary of  State  and  Mr.  Chase  as  his  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury ;  but  he  could  not  reasonably  expect  to  have 
things  just  as  he  liked  them,  so  he  had  prepared  an  alter- 
native list  to  meet  their  objections. 

"This  being  the  case,  gentlemen,"  he  added,  "how 
would  it  do  for  us  to  agree  upon  a  change  like  this  ?  To 
appoint  Mr.  Chase  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  and  offer 
the  State  Department  to  Mr.  William  L.  D'ayton,  of  New 
Jersey  ?  " 

The  delegation,  according  to  Lamon,  who  tells  the 
story,17  were  "shocked,  disappointed,  outraged."  Their 
indignation,  it  is  needless  to  say,  was  not  allayed  by  Mr. 
Lincoln's  phlegmatic  reminder  that  Mr.  Dayton  was  an 
old  Whig  like  Mr.  Seward  himself,  from  "  next  door  to 
New  York,"  nor  by  his  suggestion  that  the  latter  might 
be  Minister  to  England.  Exit  delegation  ;  enter  Seward, 
on  the  same  day,  with  their  last  shot.  In  a  brief  and 
coldly  formal  note  he  asked  "  leave  to  withdraw  "  the  ac- 


POWER  BEHIND   THE   THRONE     131 

ceptance  of  his  appointment.18  Here  was  a  crisis  on  the 
very  threshold  of  the  new  administration !  The  withdrawal 
of  this  potent  leader  would  not  alone  alienate  many  whose 
support,  in  the  perilous  condition  of  affairs,  the  President- 
elect had  counted  on  ;  but  it  would  also  necessitate  an 
entire  reconstruction  of  his  proposed  cabinet.  Yet  Lin- 
coln stood  firm.  Pondering  over  his  answer  for  two  days, 
he  handed  it  to  his  private  secretary,  on  the  morning  of 
inauguration  day,  with  the  characteristic  remark,  "  I  can't 
afford  to  let  Seward  take  the  first  trick."  Nor  did  he. 
The  note  was  as  short,  almost  to  the  word,  as  the  one  that 
had  called  it  forth.19  Without  touching  upon  the  questions 
at  issue,  the  message  merely  expressed  a  strong  desire  that 
Seward  should  not  persist  in  his  purpose.  "  It  is  the  sub- 
ject," wrote  Mr.  Lincoln,  "  of  the  most  painful  solicitude 
with  me ;  and  I  feel  constrained  to  beg  that  you  will 
countermand  the  withdrawal.  The  public  interest,  I  think, 
demands  that  you  should  ;  and  my  personal  feelings  are 
deeply  enlisted  in  the  same  direction.  Please  consider  and 
answer  by  9  o'clock  A.  M.  to-morrow."  ™ 

On  the  following  morning,  the  New  York  statesman, 
having  had  an  interview  with  the  President,  duly  returned 
to  his  allegiance.  A  few  hours  later,  when  the  cabinet 
appointments  were  submitted  to  the  Senate,  Messrs.  Chase, 
Blair,  and  Welles  were  still  on  the  list ;  and,  lo !  Governor 
Seward's  name,  like  Abou  Ben  Adhem's,  led  all  the  rest. 

The  tact  and  strength  of  will  manifested  by  Lincoln  in 
this  first  difference  with  Seward  should  have  made  some 
impression,  one  would  suppose,  on  that  astute  leader  and 
his  no  less  sagacious  advisers.  They  still,  however,  en- 
tirely misconceived  the  new  President's  character.  The 
homely  simplicity  with  which  he  had  borne  himself  when 
visited  at  "  his  secluded  abode,"  as  one  of  them  expressed 
it,  "  in  the  heart  of  Illinois,"  the  candor  with  which  he 
acknowledged  his  deficiencies,  and  the  meekness  with 
which  he  listened  to  innumerable  counselors,  bidden  or 
otherwise,  left  most  of  the  politicians  firm  in  the  opinion 


i3 2       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

that  the  conduct  of  the  coming  administration  would  be 
in  the  hands  of  his  strongest  Secretary.  Seward's  one 
formidable  rival  for  this  supremacy  some  of  them  had, 
it  was  true,  failed  to  exclude  from  the  cabinet ;  but  this 
was  attributed  to  the  influence  which  Chase  had  brought 
to  bear,  rather  than  to  any  masterful  trait  in  Lincoln, 
himself. 

The  widespread  notion  of  the  President's  weakness  was 
shared  by  Seward,  who,  at  the  same  time,  concurred  — 
need  we  add  ?  —  in  the  general  estimate  of  his  own  supe- 
riority. From  the  day  on  which  he  first  consented  to  be- 
come head  of  the  State  Department,  he  carried  himself  as 
if  responsibility  for  the  entire  government  were  to  rest  on 
his  shoulders.  Having  been  the  guiding  spirit,  unofficially, 
eleven  years  before,  through  General  Taylor's  brief  presi- 
dency, how  much  more  might  he  now  expect  to  dominate  an 
equally  untried  Executive  who  had  called  him  to  the  most 
prominent  place  in  his  cabinet!  They  were  to  take  office, 
moreover,  under  conditions  that  tended  greatly  to  mag- 
nify Mr.  Seward's  importance.  During  the  winter  which 
elapsed  between  the  time  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  election  and  his 
inauguration,  the  Southern  States,  one  after  another,  made 
good  their  threats  of  secession ;  officers  of  the  army  and 
navy,  resigning  from  the  service  in  large  numbers,  turned 
their  swords  against  the  government ;  treason  paralyzed 
every  department  at  Washington  ;  enemies  of  the  Union  — 
even  in  Mr.  Buchanan's  very  cabinet  —  labored  to  destroy 
national  authority ;  and  the  aged  President,  himself,  looked 
on  helplessly,  for  a  time  at  least,  as  civil  government 
buildings,  forts,  arsenals,  lighthouses,  ships,  marine  hos- 
pitals, and  navy-yard,  together  with  valuable  munitions, 
were  seized  by  the  rapidly  organizing  Confederacy.  While 
the  country,  demoralized  North  and  South,  thus  drifted 
through  those  four  long  months  into  civil  war,  the  man 
who  had  just  been  chosen  to  control  its  fortunes  remained, 
owing  to  a  singular  defect  in  our  system,  powerless  to 
avert  the  disaster.  In  this  extremity  Mr.  Lincoln  naturally 


POWER  BEHIND   THE   THRONE    133 

turned  to  Mr.  Seward.  From  his  seat  in  the  Upper  House 
the  Senator  became,  in  certain  respects,  the  eyes  and  ears, 
as  well  as  the  tongue,  of  the  coming  administration.  His 
utterances  were  eagerly  scanned  by  the  people  for  indica- 
tions of  its  policy,  while  the  President-elect  was  no  less 
keen  for  the  confidential  letters  in  which  his  prospective 
Secretary  kept  him  informed  as  to  the  temper  of  parties 
and  persons  at  the  Capital.  When  loyal  members  of 
Buchanan's  cabinet  wished  to  give  warning  of  the  con- 
spiracy in  the  President's  council,  they  communicated  with 
Mr.  Seward ;  when  the  General  commanding  the  army 
needed  advice,  he  too  conferred  with  him ;  when  Mr. 
Lincoln  desired  to  lay  his  views  before  the  committee 
appointed  by  the  Senate  to  devise  a  preventive  for  the 
impending  quarrel,  his  suggestions  were  placed  in  the 
hands  of  the  member  from  New  York ;  and  when  con- 
servative men,  on  both  sides,  sought  a  peaceful  solution  of 
the  difficulty,  they  appealed  to  that  same  gentleman.  In 
short,  during  this  period,  Mr.  Seward  was  considered  by 
many  to  be  the  man  of  the  hour,  and  it  is  not  too  much  to 
say  that  he  occupied  a  position  unique  in  the  experience 
of  American  statesmen. 

For  a  parallel  we  must  turn  to  that  stormy  period 
in  English  politics  when  William  Pitt  the  Elder,  on  the 
eve  of  entering  office  as  Secretary  of  State,  with  the  lead 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  the  supreme  direction  of  the 
French  war,  and  the  control  of  foreign  affairs,  declared :  — 

"  I  know  that  I  can  save  the  country,  and  I  know  no 
other  man  can." 

So  in  Mr.  Seward's  private  letters  to  his  wife,  from 
Washington,  during  the  winter  of  1860-61,  may  be  caught 
glimpses,  here  and  there,  of  how  entirely  he  believed  him- 
self to  be  the  Providence  of  the  incoming  administration.21 
The  day  on  which  he  accepted  the  first  tender  of  the  secre- 
taryship, he  wrote  to  Mrs.  Seward :  — 

"  I  have  advised  Mr.  L.  that  I  will  not  decline.  It  is 
inevitable.  I  will  try  to  save  freedom  and  my  country." 


i34      LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

A  few  days  later  he  wrote :  — 

"I  have  assumed  a  sort  of  dictatorship  for  defence; 
and  am  laboring  night  and  day,  with  the  cities  and  States. 
My  hope,  rather  my  confidence,  is  unabated." 

In  another  letter  we  find :  — 

"  I  am  trying  to  get  home ;  but  as  yet  I  see  no  chance. 
It  seems  to  me  that  if  I  am  absent  only  three  days,  this 
administration,  the  Congress,  and  the  District  would  fall 
into  consternation  and  despair.  I  am  the  only  hopeful, 
calm,  conciliatory  person  here." 

Still  another  reads :  — 

"  Mad  men  North  and  mad  men  South  are  working 
together  to  produce  a  dissolution  of  the  Union  by  civil 
war.  The  present  administration  and  the  incoming  one 
unite  in  devolving  on  me  the  responsibility  of  averting 
those  disasters.  .  .  .  Once  for  all,  I  must  gain  time  for 
the  new  administration  to  organize  and  for  the  frenzy  of 
passion  to  subside.  I  am  doing  this  without  making  any 
compromise  whatever,  by  forbearance,  conciliation,  mag- 
nanimity." 

And  shortly  after  the  inauguration,  he  wrote  to  her :  — 

"  The  President  is  determined  that  he  will  have  a  com- 
pound cabinet ;  and  that  it  shall  be  peaceful,  and  even 
permanent.  I  was  at  one  time  on  the  point  of  refusing  — 
nay,  I  did  refuse,  for  a  time,  to  hazard  myself  in  the  ex- 
periment. But  a  distracted  country  appeared  before  me ; 
and  I  withdrew  from  that  position.  I  believe  I  can  endure 
as  much  as  any  one  ;  and  may  be  that  I  can  endure  enough 
to  make  the  experiment  successful.  At  all  events  I  did 
not  dare  to  go  home,  or  to  England,  and  leave  the  country 
to  chance." 

These  assertions  seem  painfully  presumptuous,  to-day. 
Early  in  March,  1861,  not  many  persons  —  had  the  letters 
been  made  public  —  would  have  so  regarded  them. 

All  circumstances  seemed  to  confirm  Seward's  high 
estimate  of  his  value.  On  the  day  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  arri- 
val in  Washington,  the  President-elect  submitted  to  his 


POWER   BEHIND  THE  THRONE     135 

prospective  Secretary  of  State  a  copy  of  his  inaugural  ad- 
dress, as  it  had  been  privately  printed  before  he  left  home. 
If  Mr.  Seward  believed  this  honor  to  be  exclusive,  he  was 
mistaken,  for  the  document  had  been  placed  before  several 
other  public  men.22  None  of  them  had  ventured,  however, 
upon  anything  like  the  thorough  revision  to  which  he  sub- 
jected it.  When  the  address  was  returned,  on  the  follow- 
ing evening,  it  was  accompanied  by  many  suggestions, 
ranging  in  importance  from  the  rejection  or  insertion  of 
entire  paragraphs  to  the  change  of  a  word.23  The  critic, 
defending  the  conservative  tendency  of  his  corrections, 
wrote :  — 

"  Only  the  soothing  words  which  I  have  spoken  have 
saved  us  and  carried  us  along  thus  far.  Every  loyal  man 
and,  indeed,  every  disloyal  man,  in  the  South,  will  tell 
you  this." 

By  way  of  apology  for  the  liberties  he  had  taken,  the 
writer  explained :  — 

"  I,  my  dear  sir,  have  devoted  myself  singly  to  the 
study  of  the  case  —  here,  with  advantages  of  access  and 
free  communication  with  all  parties  of  all  sections.  I  have 
a  common  responsibility  and  interest  with  you,  and  I 
shall  adhere  to  you  faithfully  in  every  case.  You  must, 
therefore,  allow  me  to  speak  frankly  and  candidly."  u 

This  "  common  responsibility  "  the  President-elect,  un- 
conscious of  personal  pride  in  the  matter,  seemingly 
recognized.  He  adopted,  with  nice  discrimination,  wholly 
or  in  part,  such  of  the  amendments  as  improved  the 
address ;  and  the  deference  with  which  he  did  so,  together 
with  his  unassuming  manner  throughout  the  affair,  could 
not  have  raised  him  in  the  eyes  of  his  ambitious  Secretary 
of  State.  Perhaps  that  gentleman  recalled  how  under  sim- 
ilar circumstances  the  great  Webster  had  revised  the  inau- 
gural address  of  the  brave  but  inexperienced  Harrison. 
If  so,  the  parallel  must  have  augured  well  for  the  later 
minister's  influence  over  the  incoming  administration.25 

As  the  role  of  "  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend  "  to  this 


136       LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF   MEN 

seemingly  simple  provincial  statesman  devolved  on  Mr. 
Seward  before  the  inauguration,  how  much  more  depend- 
ent upon  him  might  he  not  expect  Mr.  Lincoln  to  become 
after  they  had  entered  office !  A  minority  President,  to 
use  an  epithet  common  at  the  time,  was  about  to  govern 
a  dismembered  nation,  with  the  aid  of  a  party  hardly  less 
divided.  His  cabinet  lacked  unity  of  purpose  or  principle, 
and  its  strongest  members  agreed  in  nothing  so  much  as 
in  mistrusting  his  leadership.  He,  himself,  felt  keenly 
the  want  of  preparation  for  a  task  such  as  had  never 
before  confronted  an  American  Executive.  Not  one  revo- 
lution, but  two,  piled  up  perplexities  around  him;  for 
the  sweeping  changes  among  office-holders,  required  by 
the  situation,  troubled  him,  at  first,  almost  as  greatly  as 
did  the  action  of  the  seceding  States.  In  the  confusion, 
Mr.  Lincoln,  of  necessity,  entrusted  much  to  his  confi- 
dential advisers,  and  especially  to  his  Secretary  of  State. 
That  functionary  bade  fair,  then,  more  than  ever,  to 
become  the  power  behind  the  Throne,  greater  than  the 
Throne  itself.  For  his  talents,  brilliant  as  they  were  on 
public  occasions,  shone  with  their  greatest  splendor  when 
he  employed  them  to  enforce  his  views,  in  private  confer- 
ence. At  cabinet  meetings,  or  at  informal  interviews  with 
the  President,  these  powers  were,  from  the  very  begin- 
ning, exerted  with  frequent,  though  not  uniform,  success. 
During  those  first  few  weeks  Mr.  Lincoln  seemed,  so 
far  as  the  public  could  see,  to  yield  himself  up  —  as  did 
one  President  before  him  and  one  after  —  to  the  charm  of 
Mr.  Seward's  persuasiveness.  The  influence  of  the  State 
Department  was  believed  to  be  paramount,  and  the  jour- 
nalist who,  before  the  inauguration,  had  spoken  of  the 
coming  regime  as  "  the  New  Yorker  with  his  Illinois  at- 
tachment," thus  coarsely  expressed  the  popular  opinion.28 
"  It  is  certain,"  wrote  another  keen  observer,  "  that  his 
ego  et  rex  meus  style  of  speaking  about  himself  and 
Mr.  Lincoln  created  a  general  belief  at  Washington  that 
he  would  be  the  Wolsey  of  the  new  administration,  with 


POWER  BEHIND  THE   THRONE     137 

'  law  in  his  voice  and  honor  in  his  hand ' ;  while  others 
would  be  subordinate  and  the  President  himself  little 
more  than  a  figurehead."  2T 

People  of  all  classes  soon  formed  the  habit  of  applying 
to  Mr.  Seward  the  titles  —  foreign  to  our  polity  though 
they  are  —  of  Premier  and  Prime  Minister.  Under  these 
designations  the  working  head  of  the  British  government 
forms  the  cabinet,  advises  the  selection  and  resignation 
of  his  colleagues,  dictates  policies,  passes  upon  important 
matters  in  all  departments,  stands  between  the  throne  and 
the  cabinet,  dispenses  enormous  patronage,  acts  at  times 
as  a  leader  of  his  party  in  Parliament,  and  answers  for 
his  conduct,  in  the  main,  not  to  the  sovereign,  but  to  the 
representatives  of  the  people.  The  first  of  these  func- 
tions Seward  had,  somehow,  as  we  have  seen,  failed  to  per- 
form ;  but  he  plunged  into  the  others,  as  nearly  as  might 
be,  with  a  spirit  befitting  the  Pitt  of  the  first  Republican 
administration. 

The  Secretary  of  State,  patterning  in  a  way  after  Jef- 
ferson and  Jackson,  succeeded,  for  several  weeks  at  the 
outset,  in  preventing  regular  cabinet  meetings.  Greatly 
to  the  annoyance  of  his  colleagues,  he  held  that  only  such 
members  as  were  particularly  concerned  in  whatever 
might  be  under  consideration  should  be  invited  to  consult 
with  him  and  the  President.  Accordingly,  as  occasion 
required,  some  or  all  of  them  were  convened  in  council, 
on  special  notice  from  himself.  This  procedure,  though 
short-lived,  served  to  confirm  for  the  time  his  pretensions 
to  unlimited  jurisdiction.  He  busied  himself  in  matters 
that  properly  pertained  to  his  cabinet  associates;  nor 
did  he  hesitate,  upon  the  demands  of  a  sharp-set  political 
following,  to  claim  the  right  of  controlling  appointments 
in  departments  other  than  his  own.  "  The  consequences 
were,"  records  the  then  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  "  that  con- 
fusion and  derangement  prevailed  to  some  extent  at  the 
commencement  by  reason  of  the  mental  activity,  assump- 
tions, and  meddlesome  intrusions  of  the  Secretary  of  State 


138       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

in  the  duties  and  affairs  of  others,  which  were,  if  not  dis- 
organizing, certainly  not  good  administration.  Confidence 
and  mutual  frankness  on  public  affairs  and  matters  per- 
taining to  the  government,  particularly  on  what  related 
to  present  and  threatened  disturbances,  existed  among  all 
the  members,  with  the  exception  of  Mr.  Seward,  who 
had,  or  affected,  a  certain  mysterious  knowledge  which 
he  was  not  prepared  to  impart.  This  was  accepted  as  a 
probable  necessity  by  his  associates,  for  he  had  been  in  a 
position  to  ascertain  facts  which  it  was  intimated  he  could 
not  perhaps  well  disclose.  It  early  became  apparent, 
however,  that  the  Secretary  of  State  had  ideas  and  notions 
of  his  own  position  and  that  of  his  colleagues,  as  well  as 
of  the  character  and  attitude  of  the  President,  that  others 
could  not  admit  or  recognize."28  This  sketch  of  the  situ- 
ation, though  it  may  have  been  slightly  colored  by  the 
recollection  of  Mr.  Welles's  own  particular  grievances, 
is  in  effect,  correct.  On  the  other  hand,  justice  to  Mr. 
Seward  requires  us  to  say  that  his  motives  were  patri- 
otic, and  that  some  at  least  of  his  so-called  "  meddlesome 
intrusions  "  had  the  President's  sanction. 

Secretary  Seward's  activities  outside  of  his  department 
naturally  led  to  misunderstandings.  These  embarrassed 
the  administration,  at  times,  not  a  little ;  but  the  Presi- 
dent patiently  smoothed  them  over,  and  continued  to  de- 
fer in  many,  if  not  in  all  things,  to  Mr.  Seward's  wisdom. 
That  gentleman's  evident  purpose,  however,  to  run  the 
government  had  not  escaped  Mr.  Lincoln's  notice.  While 
apparently  ignoring  his  aspirations,  the  President,  like 
the  practiced  wrestler  of  his  youthful  days,  found  time  to 
take  the  measure  of  the  man  who,  according  to  common 
report,  was  to  occupy  in  fact,  if  not  in  form,  the  place  to 
which  he,  himself,  had  been  elected.  When  Mrs.  Lincoln, 
ever  vigilant  for  her  husband's  fame,  repeated  to  him 
the  boast  of  the  Secretary's  friends  that  Mr.  Seward  was 
the  power  behind  the  throne  and  could  rule  the  Presi- 
dent, he  answered :  — 


POWER   BEHIND   THE   THRONE     139 

"  I  may  not  rule,  myself,  but  certainly  Seward  shall 
not.  The  only  ruler  I  have  is  my  conscience  —  following 
God  in  it  —  and  these  men  will  have  to  learn  that  yet."  M 
A  lesson  was  near  at  hand. 

The  first  vital  question  to  occupy  the  attention  of  the 
new  government  had,  in  fact,  developed  a  wide  difference 
of  opinion  between  Mr.  Lincoln  and  his  Secretary  of 
State.  It  concerned  the  stone  pentagon  at  the  entrance 
to  Charleston  harbor,  in  which  Major  Anderson  and  his 
command  were  practically  besieged  by  the  South  Carolina 
troops.  The  batteries  surrounding  Fort  Sumter  had  grown 
so  formidable,  and  the  post  was,  in  many  essentials,  so 
weak,  that  it  had  become  daily  less  tenable.  Yet  the  Pre- 
sident was  hardly  prepared  to  receive,  on  the  morning 
following  his  inauguration,  Major  Anderson's  report30 
that  the  garrison,  unless  succored,  would  in  a  few  weeks 
be  reduced  to  starvation,  and  that  relief,  with  a  view  to 
holding  the  place,  could  not  be  effected  by  "a  force  of 
less  than  twenty  thousand  good  and  well-disciplined  men." 
This  estimate  was  accompanied  by  those  of  the  nine  other 
officers  in  Fort  Sumter,  who,  while  differing  as  to  figures, 
agreed  that  a  considerable  land  and  naval  expedition 
would  be  required.31  No  such  adequate  force  was  ready 
or  could  be  made  ready  in  time.  Accordingly,  Lieuten- 
ant-General Scott,  the  commander-in-chief,  who  had  at 
once  been  consulted  by  Mr.  Lincoln,  reported  on  the  night 
of  that  same  day :  — 

"Evacuation  seems  almost  inevitable,  and  in  this  view 
our  distinguished  Chief  Engineer  (Brigadier  Totten)  con- 
curs."32 

But  the  President  did  not  concur.  He  had  promised 
the  nation,  a  few  hours  previously,  in  his  inaugural  ad- 
dress, that  the  power  confided  to  him  would  "  be  used  to 
hold,  occupy,  and  possess  the  property  and  places  belong- 
ing to  the  government."  How  could  he,  then,  before  the 
words  had  well  reached  the  people,  abandon,  without  a 
struggle,  an  important  stronghold!  The  situation  pre- 


1 40       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

sented  a  problem  as  perplexing  in  its  political  as  in  its  mil- 
itary aspects.  So  he  turned  to  his  cabinet  for  counsel. 

Mr.  Lincoln's  civil  advisers  were,  at  first,  almost  a 
unit  in  adopting  the  conclusions  of  the  experts  at  army 
headquarters.  There  was  an  exception,  however,  in  the 
person  of  Postmaster-General  Blair,  a  Democrat  of  the 
Jacksonian  school,  who  was  as  earnest  in  advocating  firm 
measures  toward  South  Carolina  as  had  been  his  father, 
twenty-eight  years  before,  in  upholding  the  strong  hand 
with  which  President  Jackson  had  put  down  sedition  in 
that  same  State.  Following  this  example,  Montgomery 
Blair,  previous  to  his  entry  into  the  cabinet,  as  well  as 
on  every  available  occasion  thereafter,  had  urged  upon 
the  President  the  necessity  of  holding  Fort  Sumter  at  any 
cost.  He  alone  among  his  associates  appears  to  have 
fully  recognized  the  inconsistency  of  reversing,  at  the 
very  earliest  test,  the  policy  which  Mr.  Lincoln  had  so 
positively  affirmed  upon  taking  office.33  The  President, 
himself,  was  keenly  alive  to  his  predicament.  "When 
Anderson  goes  out  of  Fort  Sumter,"  said  he,  "  I  shall 
have  to  go  out  of  the  White  House."  34  He  believed,  in- 
deed, as  he  explained  to  Congress,  some  months  later, 
"  that  to  so  abandon  that  position,  under  the  circum- 
stances, would  be  utterly  ruinous ;  that  the  necessity 
under  which  it  was  to  be  done  would  not  be  fully  under- 
stood ;  that  by  many  it  would  be  construed  as  a  part  of  a 
voluntary  policy ;  that  at  home  it  would  discourage  the 
friends  of  the  Union,  embolden  its  adversaries,  and  go 
far  to  insure  to  the  latter  a  recognition  abroad  ;  that,  in 
fact,  it  would  be  our  national  destruction  consummated. 
This  could  not  be  allowed." K  Yet  his  views  were  sup- 
ported, apparently,  by  only  the  youngest  and  least  distin- 
guished member  of  the  cabinet.  None  of  the  eminent 
soldiers  or  statesmen  to  whom  Mr.  Lincoln  first  looked 
for  advice  were  in  accord  with  the  President's  attitude ; 
and  the  least  acquiescent,  perhaps,  of  them  all  was  his 
Secretary  of  State. 


POWER  BEHIND   THE  THRONE     141 

Mr.  Seward  had  throughout  the  preceding  winter  in- 
dulged the  hope  of  averting  civil  war  and  of  reconciling 
existing  differences,  without  ultimately  sacrificing  the 
Union.  How  this  was  to  be  accomplished  is  not  clear  to 
us ;  nor  could  it,  in  the  nature  of  things,  have  been  clear 
to  that  statesman  himself.  His  policy,  as  vaguely  stated, 
weeks  before,  in  the  Senate,  was  "to  meet  prejudice  with 
conciliation,  exaction  with  concession  which  surrenders 
no  principle,  and  violence  with  the  right  hand  of  peace."  M 
Such  tactics  would,  he  believed,  keep  the  wavering  Border 
States  loyal  to  the  Union,  stem  the  current  of  revolution 
in  the  cotton  belt,  and  eventually  bring  the  seceders  back 
to  their  allegiance,  by  way  of  a  conveution  in  which  their 
demands  might,  somehow  or  other,  be  satisfied.  That 
these  ends  were  to  be  attained,  and  through  his  instru- 
mentality, was  Se ward's  fixed  idea.  For  weeks  after  the 
signs  of  the  times  must  have  discouraged  a  less  buoyant 
leader,  he  persisted  in  his  course.  As  late  as  March  8, 
1861,  he  is  reported  to  have  said,37  in  effect :  — 

"  I  have  built  up  the  Republican  Party,  I  have  brought 
it  to  triumph,  but  its  advent  to  power  is  accompanied  by 
great  difficulties  and  perils.  I  must  save  the  party,  and 
save  the  government  in  its  hands.  To  do  this,  war  must 
be  averted,  the  negro  question  must  be  dropped,  the  irre- 
pressible conflict  ignored,  and  a  Union  party  to  embrace 
the  Border  Slave  States  inaugurated.  I  have  already 
whipped  Mason  and  Hunter  in  their  own  State.  I  must 
crush  out  Davis,  Toombs,  and  their  colleagues  in  sedition 
in  their  respective  States.  Saving  the  Border  States  to 
the  Union  by  moderation  and  justice,  the  people  of  the 
cotton  States,  unwillingly  led  into  secession,  will  rebel 
against  their  leaders,  and  reconstruction  will  follow."  w 

Mr.  Seward's  plans  and  expectations,  it  should  be 
added,  would,  in  his  opinion,  come  to  naught,  if  force  were 
employed  against  the  secessionists.38  He  had,  accordingly, 
urged  Mr.  Lincoln  to  omit  from  the  inaugural  address 
that  promise  "  to  hold,  occupy,  and  possess  the  property 


142       LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

and  places  belonging  to  the  government "  ;  but  with- 
out avail.  The  conflict  in  policy,  thus  revealed  before  the 
men  had  even  entered  office,  reached  deeper  than  at  first 
appears.  Not  only  did  Mr.  Lincoln  deem  it  the  Presi- 
dent's duty  to  hold  the  possessions  of  the  nation,  but  his 
rugged  logic  also  recognized,  as  a  necessary  corollary,  that 
he  was  under  like  obligations  to  reclaim  any  property  of 
which  it  had  been  deprived.  He  had  so  expressed  him- 
self in  the  original  draft  of  the  address.  Upon  a  friend's 
advice,  however,  the  clause  declaring  a  purpose  to  recap- 
ture what  was  seized  had  been  omitted  —  not  on  account 
of  any  change  in  his  intention,  but  because  the  announce- 
ment, at  the  time,  might  have  needlessly  irritated  the 
South.4*  And  this  he  desired  to  avoid  no  less  earnestly 
than  Mr.  Seward.  Indeed,  the  President  and  his  Secre- 
tary of  State  had  the  same  goal  in  mind,  though  they 
disagreed  materially  —  as  we  have  seen  —  over  the  path 
by  which  it  should  be  reached. 

With  the  weight  of  opinion  among  his  advisers  squarely 
against  holding  Sumter,  Mr.  Lincoln  might  have  been 
justified  in  adopting  their  views.  Such  a  step,  it  is  true, 
would  have  been  repugnant  to  his  sense  of  duty.  On  the 
other  hand,  a  relief  expedition,  in  the  face  of  all  this  oppo- 
sition, —  military  as  well  as  political,  —  was  equally  out  of 
the  question.  Perplexed  beyond  measure,  the  President 
put  off  his  decision  and  sought  more  light.  The  technical 
objections  of  the  military  men  he  was,  of  course,  unpre- 
pared to  meet.  So  the  reports  were  referred  back  to  Gen- 
eral Scott,  for  further  consideration  ;  while  army  and  navy 
officers,  with  special  knowledge  on  the  subject,  were  sum- 
moned before  the  cabinet,  in  frequent  consultation.  What 
followed  makes  one  of  the  most  entertaining  chapters  in 
the  genesis  of  the  war.  Nevertheless  —  except  so  far  as 
concerns  the  relations  between  Mr.  Lincoln  and  Mr. 
Seward  —  a  few  lines  must  suffice  for  it  here.  The  com- 
mander-in-chief,  reaffirming  his  conviction  that  the  fort 
could  be  neither  provisioned  nor  recnforced,  submitted  an 


POWER  BEHIND  THE  THRONE     143 

order  of  evacuation  for  the  President's  signature.41  Instead 
of  signing  this,  Mr.  Lincoln  requested  his  cabinet  officers, 
respectively,  to  furnish  him  with  written  opinions  as  to 
whether,  under  the  circumstances,  an  attempt  to  provision 
Fort  Suinter  was  wise.  In  their  answers,  Mr.  Blair,  as 
before,  said  emphatically  —  yes  ;  Mr.  Chase  said  —  yes, 
with  reservations  ;  Messrs.  Smith,  Bates,  Welles,  Cam- 
eron, and  Seward  said  —  no.  The  most  urgent  counsel 
for  retreat  still  came  from  the  Department  of  State.  Mr. 
Seward  argued,  with  his  customary  elaboration,  that  a 
relief  expedition,  whether  successful  or  otherwise,  would 
precipitate  civil  war;  and,  as  this  contention  had  the 
support  of  his  four  last-mentioned  associates,  he  confi- 
dently expected  the  President  to  follow  his  lead.42 

So  sanguine  was  Mr.  Seward  of  imposing  his  ultra- 
conciliatory  policy  upon  the  administration  that  he  had, 
from  the  start,  conducted  himself  as  if  the  abandonment 
of  Sumter  were  assured.  This  was  notably  the  case  in  his 
dealings  with  the  commissioners  sent  to  Washington  by 
the  Provisional  Government  of  the  Confederacy.43  Pre- 
senting themselves,  on  the  advent  of  the  Lincoln  regime, 
they  had  sought  to  open  diplomatic  relations  with  it 
through  the  State  Department.  The  head  of  that  office, 
whom  they  then,  in  common  with  so  many  people,  North 
and  South,  took  to  be  the  head  of  the  administration  as 
well,  was  —  they  were  aware  —  committed  to  peace  and 
concession.  The  commissioners'  hopes,  therefore,  no  less 
than  their  pretensions  as  ambassadors  from  what  was 
ostensibly  a  foreign  country,  led  them  to  Mr.  Seward's 
door.  He  declined  to  receive  them,  and  asked  the  Presi- 
dent for  instructions.  Profiting  by  Mr.  Buchanan's  error, 
under  somewhat  similar  conditions,  Mr.  Lincoln  directed 
his  Secretary  neither  to  recognize  the  envoys  officially,  nor 
to  hold  any  communication  with  them  whatever.  Where- 
upon several  eminent  intermediaries  were  impressed  into 
service.  Perhaps  the  most  active  among  these  was  Justice 
Campbell  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court.*4  Although 


144      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

a  Southerner,  who  was  shortly  to  join  the  secessionists,  his 
exalted  rank  and  apparent  loyalty  to  the  Union  secured 
him  Mr.  Seward's  respectful  attention.  Their  interviews 
were  chiefly  about  Fort  Suinter,  which,  the  Secretary  gavt 
the  Judge  to  understand,  would  be  evacuated  within  a 
few  days.  This  welcome  news  Campbell  lost  no  time  in 
carrying  to  the  commissioners  and  in  writing  to  Jefferson 
Davis. 

Meanwhile,  Mr.  Lincoln  continued  to  study  the  situa- 
tion, in  his  own  way.  Consulting  with  military  and  naval 
men  whenever  he  could  snatch  a  few  moments  from  other 
cares,  trying,  by  the  reenforcement  of  Fort  Pickens  in 
Florida,  to  take  the  sting  out  of  possible  failure  in  South 
Carolina,  studying  Anderson's  resources,45  sending  trusty 
observers  to  Charleston  and  Sumter,  drawing  information 
from  executive  departments,  weighing  chances  in  the  Bor- 
der States,  gauging  southern  passions,  testing  northern 
sentiment,  —  all  this  got  him  ready,  by  the  close  of  March, 
for  the  decision  that  could  no  longer  be  deferred.  On  the 
29th  of  the  month  he  again,  at  a  cabinet  meeting,  took 
the  written  opinions  of  his  ministers.  Out  of  the  six  who 
were  present,  three  —  Blair,  Chase,  and  Welles  —  now 
agreed  with  the  President's  homely  dictum  that  they 
should  "  send  bread  to  Anderson."  Bates,  who  had  pre- 
viously been  against  provisioning  the  fort,  was  non-com- 
mittal. Smith  favored  evacuation,  on  purely  military 
grounds.  Se ward,  standing  alone,  still  advised  "against 
the  expedition  in  every  view."  *  When  the  cabinet  ad- 
journed, Mr.  Lincoln,  who  had  practically  reached  a  con- 
clusion before  it  assembled,  directed  Secretaries  Cameron 
and  Welles  to  enter  upon  relief  preparations.47  The  order 
for  the  expedition  to  sail  was  withheld  several  days, 
however,  and  while  the  issue  seemed  to  hang  in  the  bal- 
ance, Mr.  Seward  continued  his  opposition.  Even  after 
the  final  command  was  given,  he  found  it  "difficult  to 
believe"  that  the  President's  policy,  and  not  his,  had 
prevailed.4* 


POWER   BEHIND  THE   THRONE     145 

Mr.  Lincoln's  decision  left  the  Secretary  of  State  in  an 
embarrassing  position.  The  North,  for  the  moment,  looked 
askance  upon  the  all-powerful  statesman  whose  plans, 
predictions,  and  promises  were  thus,  despite  his  most 
strenuous  efforts,  discredited.  The  South,  taking  its  cue 
from  Justice  Campbell  and  the  Confederate  commission- 
ers, accused  him  of  duplicity.  A  similar  charge  spread 
against  the  Lincoln  government  itself,  which,  the  seces- 
sionist leaders  insisted,  was  wholly  under  Mr.  Seward's 
control.  That  such  was  not  the  case,  the  shrewdest  of 
them,  had,  for  some  time,  more  than  conjectured;  and 
that  the  Secretary  of  State  acted  in  good  faith,  when  he 
said  he  would  have  his  way  with  Sumter,  is  established  be- 
yond reasonable  doubt.49  But  the  very  facts  which  acquit 
the  minister  of  double-dealing  convict  him,  as  clearly,  of 
grave  indiscretion.  He  had  taken  upon  himself  to  speak 
conclusively  in  an  important  matter,  while  it  was  under 
the  consideration  of  his  chief,  who  alone  had  authority  to 
pronounce  the  decisive  word.50  Such  presumption  would, 
of  course,  have  been  out  of  the  question,  for  a  politician  of 
Seward's  experience,  had  he  not,  even  after  four  weeks 
of  close  intercourse  with  Lincoln,  committed  the  unpar- 
donable blunder  in  statecraft.  That  is  to  say,  he  still 
entirely  miscalculated  the  caliber  of  the  man  he  sought 
to  rule. 

In  the  whirl  of  events,  the  Secretary's  dazzled  vision 
mistook  the  President's  lack  of  knowledge  for  incapacity  ; 
his  indecision,  for  executive  incompetence ;  his  modesty; 
for  weakness.  The  ship  of  state  seemed  to  be  drifting 
on  to  the  rocks,  and  a  stronger  hand  —  so  thought  Mr. 
Seward  —  was  needed,  forthwith,  at  the  helm.  He  had, 
as  we  have  seen,  embarked  in  the  administration  with  the 
expectation  of  directing  its  course.  The  notion  had  appar- 
ently been  confirmed,  not  only  by  public  opinion,  but  also 
by  the  deference  with  which  the  President  treated  him. 
Nevertheless,  as  the  Sumter  incident  advanced,  the  Sec- 
retary realized  that  his  power  was  far  from  complete. 


146      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

How  to  make  himself  supreme,  once  for  all,  and,  at  the 
same  time,  rescue  the  country  from  civil  war,  had  occu- 
pied a  few  of  the  feverish  hours  which  preceded  that  final 
decision  to  relieve  the  fort.  Something  had  to  be  done, 
and  quickly,  too.  Perhaps  the  readiest  expedient  might 
have  been  that  by  which  Cardinal  Gaetano  supplanted  his 
Pope,  the  pious  and  unworldly  Celestine.  Messer  Gaetano, 
so  the  story  runs,  contrived,  soon  after  the  Pontiff's  con- 
secration, to  fill  the  sacred  chamber,  at  night,  with  voices 
that  called,  as  if  from  Heaven,  u  Resign,  Celestine !  lie- 
sign  !  "  Whereupon  the  simple  monk,  already  distracted 
by  ecclesiastical  intrigues  for  which  he  was  so  ill-adapted, 
took  the  wily  Cardinal's  advice  to  abdicate,  and  turned 
"  toward  his  secluded  abode,"  in  the  heart  of  the  moun- 
tains ;  while  Gaetano  succeeded  him,  as  Boniface  VIII. 

This  trick  answered  well  enough  for  mediaeval  politics, 
but  our  Secretary  of  State  had  to  dip  deep  down  into  his 
mind  for  a  more  modern  device.  So  he  summoned  Mr. 
Lincoln  to  surrender  the  management  of  public  affairs,  in 
a  memorandum  entitled  "  Some  Thoughts  for  the  Presi- 
dent's Consideration,  April  1, 1861."  The  document,  after 
declaring  that  the  administration,  at  the  end  of  its  first 
month,  was  "  without  a  policy,  domestic  or  foreign," 
presented  "  Thoughts "  that  might  serve  for  both.  As 
"the  policy  at  home,"  it  set  forth  that  the  horde  of  appli- 
cants for  local  offices  should  be  disposed  of,  without  de- 
lay ;  that  the  issue  before  the  country  should  be  changed 
from  a  question  of  slavery  to  one  of  union ;  and  that 
Sumter  should  be  evacuated,  but  all  other  Federal  points 
in  the  South  defended.  The  "  Thoughts  "  headed  "  For 
Foreign  Nations "  were  vigorous,  indeed.  Explanations 
were  to  be  required  from  Spain,  France,  Great  Britain, 
and  Russia,  which  all  seemed  to  contemplate  interference 
in  American  affairs.  If  the  two  first-named  governments, 
more  aggressive  than  the  others,  did  not  return  satisfac- 
tory answers,  Congress  was  to  be  convened,  and  war  was 
to  be  declared  against  them.51  A  spirit  of  antagonism 


POWER  BEHIND   THE   THRONE     147 

against  European  intervention  was,  at  the  same  time,  to 
be  aroused  in  Canada,  Mexico,  Central  America,  and  the 
continent,  generally.  "  But  whatever  policy  we  adopt," 
read  the  concluding  "  Thoughts,"  "  there  must  be  an  ener- 
getic prosecution  of  it.  For  this  purpose,  it  must  be 
somebody's  business  to  pursue  and  direct  it,  incessantly. 
Either  the  President  must  do  it  himself,  and  be  all  the 
while  active  in  it,  or  devolve  it  on  some  member  of  his 
cabinet.  Once  adopted,  debates  on  it  must  end,  and  all 
agree  and  abide.  It  is  not  in  my  especial  province  ;  but 
I  neither  seek  to  evade  nor  assume  responsibility." 52 

Never  before  had  an  American  cabinet  minister  penned 
a  document  so  extraordinary.  Its  unwisdom  —  wild  as 
some  of  the  suggestions  were  —  did  not  exceed  its  effront- 
ery.53 The  plan  to  unite  the  discordant  sections  of  the 
United  States  by  leaving  their  differences  unsettled,  and 
plunging  the  whole  continent  into  a  series  of  foreign  wars 
on  sentimental  grounds,  reads  like  the  desperate  contriv- 
ance of  a  panic-stricken  mind.54  The  implication  that  Mr. 
Lincoln  was  unequal  to  his  duties  and  should  turn  over 
the  most  important  of  them  to  a  sort  of  dictator,  could 
have  been  addressed  by  Mr.  Seward  only  to  a  President 
whom  he  believed  to  be  totally  lacking  in  strength  of 
character.  His  error  was  corrected  without  further  delay. 
Before  the  last  fish  was  hooked  or  the  last  cuckoo  hunted, 
on  that  All  Fools'  Day,  he  had  Mr.  Lincoln's  written 
reply.  The  President,  with  his  customary  disregard  of 
self,  ignored  the  insult,  and  with  tact,  not  less  delicate, 
refrained  from  comment  on  the  fantastic  scheme  for 
European  wars.  His  Secretary  was  informed  that  he 
would  find  the  domestic  policy  of  the  administration  out- 
lined in  the  inaugural  address,55  and  its  foreign  policy 
in  the  despatches  sent  abroad  by  the  State  Department. 
As  to  the  exercise  of  absolute  authority,  suggested  in 
Mr.  Seward's  closing  propositions,  Mr.  Lincoln  said :  — 

"  I  remark  that  if  this  must  be  done,  I  must  do  it. 
When  a  general  line  of  policy  is  adopted,  I  apprehend 


148       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

there  is  no  danger  of  its  being  changed  without  good 
reason,  or  continuing  to  be  a  subject  of  unnecessary 
debate  ;  still,  upon  points  arising  in  its  progress  I  wish, 
and  suppose  I  am  entitled  to  have,  the  advice  of  all  the 
cabinet."  56 

Having  quietly  settled  the  question  of  supremacy,  Mr. 
Lincoln  put  the  "  Thoughts "  away  among  his  personal 
papers,  where  they  remained  until  his  private  secretaries, 
years  after  both  statesmen  had  passed  from  the  scene, 
published  them  to  an  astonished  world.  Excepting  Mr. 
Nicolay,  nobody  else  apparently  knew  of  their  existence,  for 
the  one  to  whom  they  were  addressed  never,  it  is  believed, 
spoke  of  them,  not  even  to  the  Secretary  of  State  himself. 
If  that  gentleman,  when  he  received  his  answer,  had  any 
lingering  doubts  as  to  the  President's  superiority  over 
him,  they  must  have  been  dismissed  when  he  realized 
how  entirely  Mr.  Lincoln  disdained  to  take  advantage  of 
a  weapon  which,  in  the  grasp  of  most  politicians,  would, 
under  the  circumstances,  have  been  used  to  destroy  the 
maker.  If  ever  public  man  held  a  formidable  rival  in 
the  hollow  of  his  hand,  here  was  an  instance  of  it.  Yet 
Gulliver,  setting  down  unharmed  the  Liliputian  who  had 
tormented  him,  behaved  not  more  gently  than  did  the 
President  toward  this  presumptuous  minister.57 

Thus  ended  Seward's  dream,  of  domination.  All  his 
romantic  notions  of  saving  the  country  aus  eigner  Macht, 
so  freely  expressed  in  those  confidential  letters  to  his  wife, 
had  to  be  revised,  and  we  find  him  presently  writing  to 
her :  — 

"  Executive  skill  and  vigor  are  rare  qualities.  The 
President  is  the  best  of  us."  M 

In  the  public  eye,  however,  the  Secretary  of  State  still 
held  sway.  His  defeat  on  the  Sumter  question  was  soon 
lost  sight  of  among  the  stirring  scenes  which  crowded 
thick  and  fast  upon  that  incident.  There  ensued,  more- 
over, no  apparent  change  in  his  control  of  the  foreign 
department ;  he  was,  as  before,  entrusted  occasionally  with 


POWER  BEHIND   THE   THRONE     149 

duties  that  should  properly  have  fallen  to  one  or  an- 
other of  his  colleagues ;  and  his  cordial,  almost  constant, 
association  with  the  President  created  the  impression  that 
his  influence  had  increased  rather  than  diminished.59 
Even  public  men  high  in  office  continued  to  believe  for  a 
time  that  Mr.  Seward  practically  ran  the  administration, 
an  idea  which  some  of  them,  in  fact,  never  quite  aban- 
doned. 

As  late  as  1873,  this  view  was  advanced  on  a  notable 
occasion  by  the  Hon.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  our  Min- 
ister at  the  Court  of  St.  James  during  the  Civil  War. 
He  favored  the  New  York  legislature,  shortly  after  the 
great  statesman's  death,  with  a  memorial  address,  which 
attracted  widespread  attention,  not  so  much  for  its  appro- 
priate eulogy  of  Mr.  Seward  as  for  its  disparagement  of 
Mr.  Lincoln.  The  President,  according  to  this  orator,  was 
so  inferior  to  the  Secretary  of  State  "  in  native  intellec- 
tual power,  in  extent  of  acquirement,  in  breadth  of  philo- 
sophical experience,  and  in  the  force  of  moral  discipline," 
that  he  allowed  his  minister  to  direct  the  affairs  of  the 
nation  in  the  Executive's  name.  Lincoln,  asserted  Mr. 
Adams,  had  consequently  reaped  honors  which  he  owed 
for  the  most  part  to  Seward's  labors,  and  which  it  was 
the  duty  of  history  to  reapportion.60  Here  was  manifest 
error ;  but  panegyric,  especially  when  pronounced  upon 
a  recently  departed  leader  by  a  loving  follower,  has  its 
privilege.  Hence  the  address,  notwithstanding  its  semi- 
official character  and  the  eminence  of  its  author,  might 
have  been  lightly  passed  over  by  the  historian  of  to-day 
if  it  had  not,  at  the  time  it  was  delivered,  evoked  an 
important  reply.  This  was  published  by  ex-Secretary 
Welles,  upon  the  request  of  Montgomery  Blair,  the  only 
other  surviving  member  of  the  Lincoln  cabinet.81  They 
agreed  that  the  eulogist  had  entirely  misapprehended 
the  relations  between  the  two  men,  and  that,  whatever 
might  be  said  of  Mr.  Seward's  ability,  the  President,  not 
he,  had  been  master  of  the  situation.  "Indeed,"  wrote 


150       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

Mr.  Welles,  "the  whole  language,  tone,  tenor,  sentiment, 
and  intent  of  the  address  are  to  elevate  Mr.  Seward 
and  depreciate  Mr.  Lincoln ;  to  award  to  the  Secretary 
honors  that  clearly  belong  to  the  President;  to  make  it 
appear  that  the  subordinate  controlled  and  directed  the 
principal ;  that  the  Secretary  of  State  was  de  facto  Presi- 
dent, and  the  President  himself  a  mere  locum  tenens, 
incompetent  for  the  place  from  the  want  of  *  experience ' 
and  'previous  preparation.'  Mr.  Seward  had  influence  in 
the  administration,  but  not  control.  His  mental  activity, 
the  '  marvelous  fertility  of  his  pen,'  his  proneness  to  exer- 
cise authority  and  to  make  himself  conspicuous  on  every 
important  subject  and  occasion,  imposed  on  admiring  and 
willing  friends,  who,  like  Mr.  Adams,  persuaded  them- 
selves that  one  so  active  and  prominent  must  be  the 
moving  and  directing  spirit  of  the  administration.  .  .  . 
To  those  who  knew  Abraham  Lincoln,  or  who  were  at  all 
intimate  with  his  administration,  the  representation  that 
he  was  subordinate  to  any  member  of  his  cabinet,  or  that 
he  was  deficient  in  executive  or  administrative  ability,  is 
absurd."  ° 

Upon  this  testimony  and  more  like  it,  throughout 
Mr.  Welles' s  monograph,  we  infer  that  the  Secretary  of 
State  —  appearances  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding  — 
must  have  stepped  back  to  the  place  so  firmly  yet  cour- 
teously pointed  out  by  the  President,  in  the  little  private 
interlude  which  closed  their  first  four  weeks  of  office. 
From  that  time  to  the  end,  Seward  knew  Lincoln  to  be 
his  master.  With  a  grace  peculiarly  his  own,  the  Secre- 
tary adapted  himself  to  this  unexpected  development. 
His  every  action  seemed  to  say,  as  did  the  fair  penitent 
of  the  house  of  Capulet,  — 

"  Pardon,  I  beseech  you  ! 
Henceforward  I  am  ever  ruled  by  you." 

When  his  inclinations  or  purposes  conflicted  with  those 
of  his  chief,  he  gave  way  —  nay,  more,  he  put  forth  all 
his  powers  to  carry  out  Mr.  Lincoln's  wishes.  "There  is 


POWER  BEHIND   THE  THRONE     151 

but  one  vote  in  the  cabinet,"  the  minister  once  declared, 
"  and  that  is  cast  by  the  President."  m  How  complete  was 
the  submission  of  the  speaker,  himself,  may  be  gathered 
from  a  few  well-known  incidents. 

Seward's  senatorial  career,  particularly  his  experience 
on  the  Foreign  Relations  Committee,  fitted  him,  in  Mr. 
Lincoln's  eyes,  for  the  management  of  the  State  Depart- 
ment. In  planning  his  administration,  the  President-elect 
had  said :  — 

"One  part  of  the  business,  Governor  Seward,  I  think 
I  shall  leave  almost  entirely  in  your  hands ;  that  is,  the 
dealing  with  those  foreign  nations  and  their  govern- 
ments." M 

Nevertheless,  Mr.  Lincoln  required  important  questions 
to  be  laid  before  him,  and,  when  occasion  demanded,  he 
did  not  hesitate  to  take  the  guiding  hand  himself.  This 
was  the  case  a  few  weeks  after  the  episode  of  the 
"Thoughts,"  when  the  British  government  recognized, 
with  unseemly  haste,  the  belligerency  of  the  Confeder- 
ate States.  England's  unfriendly  attitude  irritated  Mr. 
Seward  out  of  his  habitual  diplomatic  composure  to  such 
a  degree  that  the  letter  of  instruction,  which  he  wrote  for 
Mr.  Adams,  our  Minister  in  London,  was  more  forcible 
than  wise.  Had  the  despatch,  as  it  stood,  been  sent  abroad 
and  read,  in  accordance  with  custom,  to  her  Britannic 
Majesty's  Secretary  of  State  for  Foreign  Affairs,  serious 
difficulties  with  England  might  have  ensued.  This  would 
hardly  have  suited  the  President's  maxim,  "One  war  at 
a  time  " ;  so,  retaining  the  document,  he  subjected  it  to 
a  critical  revision.  Striking  out  some  of  the  most  offen- 
sive expressions  and  modifying  others,  he  transformed  an 
international  fire-brand  into  a  harmless  diplomatic  note. 
When  the  paper  was  returned  to  the  author,  its  erasures 
and  interlineations  must  have  recalled  his  labors  of  three 
months  before,  upon  the  inaugural  address.  If  so,  the 
difference  in  the  circumstances,  probably,  did  not  escape 
him.  Mr.  Seward's  changes  had,  properly  enough,  been 


152       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

suggested  in  a  separate  letter ;  the  President's  were  made, 
without  ceremony,  on  the  draft  itself.  Mr.  Lincoln's  cor- 
rections, moreover,  although  they  materially  altered  the 
letter,  in  its  general  tone  and  purpose,  were,  unlike  Mr. 
Seward's, — with  a  few  slight  deviations,  —  literally  ob 
served.  For  the  Secretary  of  State  took  his  lesson  in 
diplomacy  as  meekly  as  he  had,  a  few  weeks  before, 
received  one  in  politics.65 

Seward's  blunders  in  the  Adams  despatch  were  grave. 
Together  with  his  Quixotic  scheme  for  continental  wars, 
they  naturally  impaired  the  President's  confidence  in  his 
judgment  on  foreign  affairs.  As  international  problems 
of  importance  arose,  Mr.  Lincoln  fell  into  the  practice 
of  consulting  not  only  his  Secretary  of  State,  but  other 
advisers,  in  the  cabinet  and  out  of  it,  as  well.  Chief 
among  these  was  Charles  Simmer.  His  position  as  chair- 
man of  the  Senate  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations,  his 
familiarity  with  diplomatic  questions,  his  acquaintance 
with  European  statesmen,  and  his  ripe  scholarship  ren- 
dered his  opinions  of  particular  value  to  the  President. 
Mr.  Lincoln  even  went  so  far  as  to  call  the  Senator  and 
the  Secretary  into  council  together.  When,  as  happened 
in  several  instances,  Sumner's  views  were  opposed  to 
Seward's,  the  President  decided  between  them.  And  his 
decision  was  not  always  in  the  minister's  favor.  Mr. 
Seward's  humiliation  at  this  compulsory  division  of  his 
functions  with  another  was  hardly  alleviated  by  the  fact 
that  that  other  represented  a  wing  of  their  party  intensely 
inimical  to  him.  Once,  upon  being  answered  by  Mr. 
Lincoln  with  an  opinion  from  Sumner,  he  hotly  exclaimed 
that  there  were  "too  many  Secretaries  of  State  in 
Washington."  w  But  such  outbreaks  were  rare ;  and  champ 
as  he  might,  when  the  team  was  doubled,  Seward  stayed 
in  the  traces.97 

What  was  true  as  to  foreign  matters  was  equally  the 
case  in  domestic  affairs.  Here  also  Mr.  Lincoln,  whenever 
lie  saw  fit  to  do  so,  exercised  over  Mr.  Seward  supreme 


POWER   BEHIND   THE   THRONE     153 

authority.  This  is  strikingly  shown  in  one  of  the  famous 
episodes  of  the  war.  Early  in  1865,  the  President  of  the 
Confederacy  was  influenced  by  Francis  Preston  Blair, 
Senior,  to  appoint  a  peace  commission  for  informal  con- 
ference with  the  Federal  government.  President  Lincoln, 
!iaving  directed  Secretary  Seward  to  meet  the  southern 
representatives,  Messrs.  Stephens,  Hunter,  and  Campbell,88 
at  Fortress  Monroe,  handed  him  written  instructions  which 
read :  — 

"You  will  make  known  to  them  that  three  things 
are  indispensable  —  to  wit :  first,  The  restoration  of  the 
national  authority  throughout  all  the  States ;  second, 
No  receding  by  the  Executive  of  the  United  States  on 
the  slavery  question  from  the  position  assumed  thereon 
in  the  late  annual  message  to  Congress,  and  in  preceding 
documents ;  third,  No  cessation  of  hostilities  short  of  an 
end  of  the  war,  and  the  disbanding  of  all  forces  hostile 
to  the  government. 

"  You  will  inform  them  that  all  propositions  of  theirs, 
not  inconsistent  with  the  above,  will  be  considered  and 
passed  upon  in  a  spirit  of  sincere  liberality.  You  will 
hear  all  they  may  choose  to  say  and  report  it  to  me.  You 
will  not  assume  to  definitely  consummate  anything." 69 

With  these  —  the  orders  of  a  master  to  his  servant  — 
Mr.  Seward  set  out.  Not  many  hours  later,  a  despatch 
from  General  Grant,70  who  had  received  the  southern 
nommissioners  within  his  lines  at  City  Point,  led  the 
President  to  think  that  he,  himself,  might  accomplish 
more  than  his  Secretary  of  State.  The  fact  that  the  mis- 
sion had  been  formally  confided  to  Mr.  Seward,  and  with 
minute  instructions,  did  not  deter  Mr.  Lincoln  from  tak- 
ing it  out  of  his  hands.  Hastening  after  the  Secretary, 
he  joined  him  previous  to  the  conference,  and,  without 
so  much  as  by  your  leave,  took  the  northern  side  of  the 
discussion  under  his  own  direction. 

Truly,  Seward's  over-zealous  eulogist  blundered  in  mag- 
nifying the  subaltern  at  the  captain's  expense.  Yet,  not 


i54      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

a  few  of  Lincoln's  biographers  have  erred  as  badly,  in 
the  opposite  direction.  Perhaps  they  thought  to  increase 
the  President's  inches  by  belittling  the  cabinet  officer  who 
stood  so  near  him  —  or,  did  their  eyes,  full  of  Lincoln's 
dominating  figure,  fail  to  take  in  Seward's  actual  stature  ? 
Be  that  as  it  may,  they  render  the  greater  man's  fame 
no  service  by  underrating  the  powers  of  the  subordinate, 
whom  —  as  we  have  seen  —  he  bent  completely  to  his  will. 
Indeed,  justice  to  Lincoln,  no  less  than  to  Seward,  re- 
quires that  the  Secretary  receive  full  credit.  The  records 
of  the  State  Department,  during  that  most  critical  epoch 
in  the  nation's  foreign  affairs,  bear  abundant  testimony  to 
Mr.  Seward's  brilliant  labors.  Granting  his  occasional 
mistakes  of  method  or  policy,  in  coping  with  the  trained 
diplomatists  of  Europe,  our  Secretary's  severest  critics 
among  his  own  countrymen  should  at  least  acknowledge, 
as  did  Earl  Russell,  his  foremost  British  opponent,  that 
he  evinced  singular  and  varied  ability.  Only  talents  of  a 
superior  order  could,  in  fact,  have  conducted  the  State 
Department  through  the  dark  hours  of  the  Civil  War. 
With  a  distracted  country  behind  him,  and  the  two  most 
powerful  governments  of  Christendom  threatening  from 
both  sides,  in  ill-concealed  hostility,  Mr.  Seward  achieved 
results  that  fixed  his  place  high,  if  not  highest,  on  the 
roll  of  American  foreign  ministers. 

No  one,  it  is  safe  to  say,  appreciated  the  Secretary  at 
his  true  value  so  accurately  as  the  President.  In  his 
admiration  of  Mr.  Seward,  he  overlooked  the  mistakes, 
supplemented  the  important  labors,  on  occasion,  with 
necessary  touches  of  his  own  shrewd  common  sense,  and 
kept  the  brilliant  talents  employed  for  the  best  interests 
of  the  country.  Mr.  Lincoln,  it  is  true,  privately  contem- 
plated, in  at  least  two  recorded  instances,  the  removal  of 
Seward  ;71  but  he  gave  his  Secretary,  none  the  less,  unwa- 
vering public  support.  Of  this  aid  Mr.  Seward,  now  and 
then,  stood  greatly  in  need.  When  military  reverses  or 
administrative  troubles  came,  he  was,  for  a  time,  because 


POWER  BEHIND   THE   THRONE     155 

of  his  reputed  power  in  the  government,  held  responsible 
by  the  people ;  while  Radical  leaders,  taking  advantage  of 
every  opening,  tried  in  season  and  out  to  influence  the 
President  against  him.72  As  these  unrelated  attempts  all 
failed,  Seward's  enemies  resorted  to  organized  attacks. 
Early  in  September,  1862,  a  committee  of  prominent  New 
Yorkers,  led  by  the  venerable  son  of  Alexander  Hamilton, 
called  upon  Mr.  Lincoln  ostensibly  to  urge  "  a  change  of 
policy."  They  represented,  according  to  their  own  state- 
ment, not  only  the  views  of  the  dissatisfied  Republican 
element  in  the  Empire  State,  but  of  five  New  England 
Governors  as  well.  The  animus  of  their  criticisms  soon 
became  apparent  to  the  President,  who,  in  the  midst  of 
the  heated  discussion  that  ensued,  angrily  exclaimed :  — 

"  You,  gentlemen,  to  hang  Mr.  Seward  would  destroy 
the  government."  73 

Exit  the  wise  men  of  Gotham  —  sadder,  though  not 
wiser,  than  when  they  came.  For  despite  Lincoln's  atti- 
tude toward  them,  the  factional  opposition  against  his 
Secretary  of  State  lost  none  of  its  momentum.  On  the 
contrary,  it  made  such  headway  by  the  middle  of  Decem- 
ber that  a  caucus  of  Republican  Senators  voted  to  demand 
Seward's  dismissal;  but  even  these  formidable  enemies 
failed  to  break  down  the  President's  protection.  With 
what  courage  and  adroitness  he  defended  Seward,  and 
how  thoroughly  he  put  the  attacking  party  to  rout,  will  be 
told,  with  all  its  dramatic  details,  in  the  story  of  that 
other  cabinet  officer  who  shared  the  defeat.  It  is  enough 
to  say  here  that  our  powerful  minister  gladly  found  safety 
behind  the  man  whom,  not  many  months  before,  he  had 
thought  to  thrust  into  the  background.  After  the  repulse 
of  the  senatorial  cabal,  moreover,  Lincoln  made  short 
work  of  those  who  came  to  undermine  the  Secretary  of 
State.  He  shielded  Seward  against  all  such  assaults,  and 
kept  him  secure  in  his  high  office  to  the  end. 

Small  wonder  that  the  respect,  which  the  Secretary 
had  early  learned  to  show  his  chief,  became  mingled  with 


156       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

a  warmth  of  personal  devotion  that  has  not,  in  similar 
relations  of  our  history,  been  surpassed.  Renouncing  his 
own  aspirations,  Mr.  Seward  dedicated  himself,  without 
reserve,  to  the  President's  political  fortunes,  as  well  as  to 
the  success  of  his  administration,  so  far  as  it  might  be 
achieved  by  the  State  Department.74  The  minister's  con- 
duct, as  the  bond  between  the  two  men  strengthened,  said 
—  or  seemed  to  say  —  with  old  Adam :  — 

"  Master,  go  on,  and  I  will  follow  thee, 
To  the  last  gasp,  with  truth  and  loyalty." 

To  the  last  gasp,  indeed.  For  when  Lincoln  was  mur- 
dered, the  assassins,  as  if  their  foul  work  might  otherwise 
have  been  incomplete,  struck  another  blow  that  was  to 
send  Seward  after  him.  It  failed  to  cut  off  the  springs  of 
life,  and  he  was  left  behind  to  carry  —  in  a  sense  —  alone, 
the  burden  these  two  had  so  affectionately  borne  together. 
A  few  years  Seward  tarried.  Then,  full  of  days  and  hon- 
ors, he  too  was  laid  at  rest.  On  his  tomb,  in  Fort  Hill 
cemetery,  at  Auburn,  those  who  loved  him  inscribed  no 
word  of  all  his  triumphs.  Looking  back  through  the  try- 
ing scenes  of  the  war  and  seeming  to  see  him  again  at  the 
President's  side,  they  recalled  an  epitaph  that  Seward, 
himself,  had,  in  his  prime,  selected.75  So  they  carved  on 
the  stone :  — 

"  He  was  faithful." 

Had  the  master  whom  the  departed  statesman  served 
stood  by,  he  might  well  have  pronounced,  as  of  old,  the 
familiar  formula :  — 

"Approved.  —  A.  Lincoln." 


CHAPTER  V 

AN  INDISPENSABLE  MAN 

THE  man  who  divided  with  Lincoln  and  Seward  the 
highest  honors  in  the  Republican  National  Convention 
of  1860  was  Salmon  Portland  Chase.  He  received  on 
two  of  the  three  ballots  for  the  presidential  nomination 
the  third  largest  number  of  votes.  The  figures,  them- 
selves, in  comparison  with  those  of  the  two  foremost 
candidates,  were  small ;  for  not  even  all  the  delegates 
from  Ohio,  his  own  State,  gave  Mr.  Chase  their  support. 
Nevertheless,  if  the  suffrages  of  the  Convention  had  been 
based  —  to  the  exclusion  of  other  considerations  —  upon 
national  prominence,  reputed  ability,  and  party  services, 
he  would  have  stood  second  to  Seward,  alone.  Like  that 
eminent  leader,  Chase  had  twice  been  Governor  of  a  great 
commonwealth,  and  had  twice  been  elected  to  the  United 
States  Senate.  In  these  high  places  his  acts,  no  less  than 
his  principles,  had  embodied  the  finest  aspirations  of  the 
Convention.  Many  of  its  members,  indeed,  who  withheld 
from  him  their  votes  paid  tribute  privately  to  the  merits 
of  his  illustrious  career. 

Chase  belonged  to  that  class  of  strenuous  nation  build- 
ers who,  for  lack  of  a  better  title,  have  been  termed 
Western  Yankees.  After  graduation  from  Dartmouth 
College,  in  his  native  State,  he  had  resorted  to  the  twin 
stepping-stones  on  which  so  many  Americans  have  at- 
tained eminence  —  school- teach  ing  and  law.  Admitted  to 
the  bar  in  his  twenty-second  year,  he  had  taken  up  his 
residence  in  Cincinnati,  with  the  business,  literary,  and 
social  life  of  which  he  soon  became  actively  identified.1 
Professional  success,  together  with  an  honorable  position 


158       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

in  the  community,  were  within  the  newcomer's  reach,  when 
he  had  seemingly  brushed  them  aside  by  lending  his  tal- 
ents to  the  small  knot  of  despised  Abolitionists  who 
braved,  in  the  early  thirties,  the  pro-slavery  prejudices 
of  southern  Ohio.  Cincinnati's  interests  were  so  closely 
interwoven  with  those  of  the  black  belt  beyond  the  river 
that  her  citizens,  especially,  held  the  reformers  in  detesta- 
tion. As  was  to  be  expected,  the  young  lawyer's  course 
in  allying  himself  with  the  so-called  disturbers  of  the 
public  peace  had  estranged  influential  friends  and  clients, 
who  saw,  or  thought  they  saw,  in  this  association  his 
inevitable  ruin.2  At  some  risk  to  himself,  he  had,  in  the 
summer  of  1836,  confronted  a  mob  on  its  way  to  attack 
James  G.  Birney  ;  and,  a  few  months  thereafter,  when 
that  friend  of  the  negroes  was  indicted  for  harboring  a 
female  slave,  Chase  had  appeared  in  his  defence.  The 
fugitive,  herself,  despite  the  plea  of  the  same  foolhardy 
advocate,  was  returned  to  bondage,  but  her  race  had  gained 
a  champion.  So  frequently  thereafter  had  Chase  acted  as 
counsel  for  fugitive  slaves  and  those  who  befriended  them 
that  he  had  been  derisively  nicknamed  "  attorney-general 
for  runaway  negroes."  The  duties  of  this  fanciful  office, 
unprofitable  as  they  were  unpopular,  he  had  cheerfully 
accepted  ;  yet  adverse  decision  upon  decision  had  taught 
him  that  the  anti-slavery  cause  was  to  be  won,  not  at  the 
bar,  but  in  the  forum. 

To  the  field  of  politics,  therefore,  Chase  had  carried  his 
ideals,  only  to  find  that  there,  as  in  law,  they  were  heavy 
handicaps.  Neither  of  the  two  great  parties,  Whigs  nor 
Democrats,  —  he  had  tried  them  both,  —  was  prepared,  at 
the  time,  for  anti-slavery  principles.  So,  foregoing  the 
preferment  that  his  talents  might  have  won  for  him  in 
such  powerful  organizations,  Chase  had  affiliated  himself, 
usually  as  a  master  mind,  with  the  unsubstantial  factions 
— Liberty-men,  Independent  Democrats,  Free-soilers,  and 
what  not  —  which  struggled  one  after  another  to  give  the 
cause  a  political  standing.  When  at  last  one  of  these 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN         159 

bodies  chanced  to  gain  a  foothold,  there  came  to  pass 
something  like  the  miracle  promised  in  the  Scriptures, 
—  he  who  had  lost  his  life  for  his  conscience's  sake  had 
found  it.  A  dead-lock  in  joint  session  of  the  Ohio  legis- 
lature, during  the  winter  of  1848-49,  had  left  the  balance 
of  power  in  the  hands  of  two  Independent  Free-soilers ; 
and  so  skilfully  had  they  exercised  it  as  to  compel  the 
election  of  Mr.  Chase  to  the  United  States  Senate.  There, 
political  accident  as  he  was,  without  experience  in  pub- 
lic office,  and  without  recognition  by  either  of  the  two 
parties  which  divided  legislative  business,  he  had  before 
the  expiration  of  his  term  taken  rank  as  a  leader  among 
such  anti-slavery  giants  as  Hale,  Sumner,  Seward,  Wade, 
Hamlin,  and  Fessenden.  When  these  men  and  others, 
equally  eminent,  established  the  Republican  Party,  Chase's 
enthusiasm  for  its  principles,  no  less  than  his  talent  for 
political  organization,  had  again  carried  him  to  his  accus- 
tomed place  in  the  front  rank.  Scarcely  had  he  com- 
pleted his  senatorial  labors,  when  he  had  led  the  Ohio 
branch  of  the  new  party  to  a  victory  that  placed  him  in 
the  Governor's  chair.  Through  two  administrations  —  for 
he  was,  as  we  have  said,  reflected  to  the  office  —  Chase 
had  not  only  strengthened  Republicanism  in  the  State, 
but  had  abundantly  contributed,  as  well,  to  its  upbuilding 
in  the  Nation.  His  prestige  seemed  complete  when,  upon 
stepping  out  of  the  governorship,  he  had,  by  a  large  and 
spontaneous  vote,  been  again  elected  to  the  United  States 
Senate.  Still  flushed  with  this  triumph,  Mr.  Chase  had, 
a  few  months  thereafter,  sought  yet  higher  honors  at  the 
Chicago  Convention,  only  to  go  down,  in  his  first  signal 
defeat,  before  Abraham  Lincoln. 

The  man  from  Illinois  felt  kindly  toward  the  Ohio 
leader.  Mr.  Chase  was  one  of  the  few  distinguished 
statesmen  who  had  sympathized  with  Mr.  Lincoln  in  his 
memorable  canvass  for  the  Senate  against  Stephen  A. 
Douglas.  On  that  occasion,  the  Governor  had,  like  Gid- 
diiigs,  Corwin,  Colfax,  and  Cassius  M.  Clay,  come  from 


160      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

beyond  the  limits  of  the  State  to  aid  the  Republican  can- 
didate.3 In  Lincoln's  mind,  moreover,  Chase  was  coupled 
with  Seward  as  one  of  the  two  great  captains  who,  having1 
guided  the  anti-slavery  hosts  through  the  wilderness,  were 
entitled  to  lead  them  into  the  promised  land.4  When  the 
National  Convention  decided  otherwise,  it  was  a  change 
of  votes  among  Chase's  adherents  that  had  turned  the 
scale  in  the  Illinoisan's  favor ; 5  and  when  the  latter  was 
elected  to  the  presidency,  none  of  his  rivals  for  the 
nomination  had  given  him  more  loyal  support  than  had 
the  Senator-elect  from  Ohio.  Add  to  these  circumstances 
that  the  Westerner,  Chase,  though  an  Independent,  was 
credited  to  the  Democratic  element  in  the  new  party,  as 
Seward,  an  eastern  man,  represented  the  Whigs,  and  we 
comprehend  why  Mr.  Lincoln,  beginning  the  construction 
of  his  carefully  balanced  cabinet  with  the  New  Yorker, 
should  assign  the  second  place  in  it  to  the  famous  Ohioan. 
No  sooner  had  Seward  accepted  his  appointment  than 
Chase  was  summoned  by  telegraph  to  Springfield.  Learn- 
ing of  his  arrival,  the  President-elect,  with  the  disregard 
of  formality  habitual  to  him,  called  on  the  visitor,  at  his 
hotel.  "  I  have  done  with  you,"  said  Mr.  Lincoln,  "  what 
I  would  not  perhaps  have  ventured  to  do  with  any  other 
man  in  the  country  —  sent  for  you  to  ask  you  whether  you 
will  accept  the  appointment  of  Secretary  of  the  Trea- 
sury, without,  however,  being  exactly  prepared  to  offer  it 
to  you."  8  The  other  replied  that  he  desired  no  cabinet 
office,  and  that,  if  he  did,  he  could  not  easily  reconcile 
himself  to  a  subordinate  one.  Whereupon  Mr.  Lincoln 
explained  that  he  had  tendered  the  portfolio  of  State  to 
Mr.  Seward,  as  the  generally  recognized  leader  of  the 
Republican  Party,  with  the  intention,  if  he  declined,  of 
offering  it  to  Mr.  Chase  ;  but  that,  as  it  had  been  accepted, 
the  next  important  post  in  the  cabinet  was  probably  at 
the  visitor's  command.  "  I  replied,"  wrote  Mr.  Chase  in 
his  account  of  the  interview,  "  that  I  did  not  wish,  and 
was  not  prepared  to  say  that  I  would  accept  that  place  if 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN        161 

offered."  He  graciously  added,  however,  that  the  appoint- 
ment of  Mr.  Seward  to  the  Department  of  State  would 
remove  his  objections  to  a  subordinate  office,  if  he  should 
conclude  to  accept  one,  under  any  conditions.  "  Every- 
thing was  left  open,"  to  quote  Mr.  Chase,  when  the  two 
men  parted ;  but  it  was  understood,  throughout  the  coun- 
try, that  he  would  probably  be  Secretary  of  the  Treasury. 
This  prospect,  as  we  have  seen,  was  distasteful  in  the 
extreme  to  Seward's  friends.  They  strove  to  shut  Chase 
out  of  the  cabinet  —  how  earnestly  and  how  fruitlessly 
has  already  been  narrated.  Nor  were  they  the  only  oppo- 
nents of  the  appointment.  Yet  Mr.  Lincoln's  esteem  for 
the  man,  as  well  as  his  confidence  in  the  political  wisdom 
of  the  selection,  suffered  no  diminution  during  the  two 
months  of  partisan  bickerings  that  intervened  between 
their  conference  and  the  inauguration  of  the  new  admin- 
istration. One  of  its  earliest  acts  was  to  lay  before  the 
Senate  the  President's  proposed  cabinet — with  the  Trea- 
sury assigned  to  Mr.  Chase. 

That  gentleman's  attitude,  however,  was  now  found  to 
have  undergone  somewhat  of  a  change.  The  good  temper 
with  which  he  had  laid  aside  his  pretensions  to  the  highest 
cabinet  prize,  in  Seward's  favor,  must  have  been  sorely 
tried  by  the  efforts  of  that  leader's  friends  to  exclude  him 
altogether.  They  had  not  succeeded  in  this,  it  is  true,  yet 
Seward's  ascendancy  over  the  incoming  administration 
was  generally  conceded,  and  it  boded  no  good  to  Chase's 
personal  ambitions.  Under  these  conditions,  a  place  in  the 
untried  Lincoln's  parti-colored  cabinet  • —  face  to  face  as 
it  was  with  a  crisis,  serious  beyond  measure  —  looked  less 
inviting  than  ever  to  a  Senator  with  his  full  term  before 
him.  In  the  Upper  House,  Chase  could,  unhampered, 
advance  his  principles  and  his  political  fortunes  together. 
His  private  estate,  too,  which  was  not  in  a  flourishing  con- 
dition, might  properly  be  improved,  while  he  held  a  legis- 
lative office ;  but  as  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  all  roads 
to  profit — professional  or  otherwise  —  would  be  closed  to 


162       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

him.  Moreover,  —  and  this  was  of  much  importance  to  a 
person  of  Mr.  Chase's  temperament,  —  his  pride  had  been 
piqued  at  the  way  in  which  the  offer  of  the  appointment 
originally  came  to  him.  "  Had  it  been  made  earlier,"  he 
said,  "and  with  the  same  promptitude  and  definiteness 
as  that  to  Mr.  Seward,  I  should  have  been  inclined  to 
make  some  sacrifices."7  By  the  time  the  formal  nomina- 
tion reached  the  Senate,  therefore,  Chase  had  practically 
decided  not  to  accept  a  cabinet  office.  He  had,  in  fact, 
already  taken  his  seat  in  the  upper  chamber;  but  hap- 
pened, at  the  moment,  to  be  absent.  Learning  upon  his 
return  that  his  name  had  been  presented  for  the  Treasury 
portfolio  and  unanimously  confirmed,  he  hastened  before 
the  President  to  decline.  What  took  place  at  that  inter- 
view is  not  precisely  known.  Chase  came,  as  Seward  had 
a  few  hours  before,  with  a  refusal,  on  the  very  eve  of  sail- 
ing, to  embark  in  Lincoln's  shaky  craft.  Like  Seward, 
Chase  was  somehow  influenced  by  that  raw  captain,  with 
his  gently  masterful  ways,  to  reconsider,  and  like  him, 
still,  he  stepped  on  board  the  following  day,  signed  for 
the  voyage. 

As  the  ship  which  carried  the  fate  of  a  nation  cast 
loose  from  her  moorings  and  stood  out  for  the  open  sea, 
already  churning  in  the  teeth  of  the  gathering  storm,  a 
stranger,  glancing  over  her  group  of  officers  to  discern  by 
appearance,  if  he  might,  which  one  of  them  had  been 
entrusted  with  so  perilous  a  command,  must  have  quickly 
passed  over  the  uncouth-looking  Lincoln  to  single  out, 
from  among  those  about  him,  the  imposing  figure  of 
Salmon  P.  Chase.  He  looked  the  part.  His  tall,  well- 
proportioned  frame  supported  a  massive  head.  Every  line 
of  the  expressive  face,  from  dome-like  forehead  to  firm, 
smooth-shaven  chin,  described  a  curve  of  virile  beauty. 
Nature  has  been  so  lavish  to  but  few  of  our  public  leaders, 
and  by  none  of  them  have  personal  advantages  been  borne 
with  greater  dignity.  This  stately  presence  was  reenforced, 
moreover,  by  a  mind  as  vigorous  as  it  was  cultivated.  A 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN        163 

lover  of  literature,  with  three  modern  languages  at  com- 
mand, a  good  classical  scholar,  —  as  college  men  go, — > 
a  well-trained  lawyer  of  judicial  temperament,  a  close 
reasoner,  a  master  of  exposition,  a  fluent  writer,  an  earnest 
worker,  Chase  was  equipped  for  any  task  that  his  restless 
ambition  might  impose.  As  an  author  of  political  procla- 
mations and  party  platforms,  he  had  no  peer.  To  his 
talents  in  this  direction  the  resolutions  and  address  of  the 
Liberty  Party,  at  the  Ohio  State  Convention  in  1841 ; 
the  platform  adopted  by  the  same  organization  in  the 
National  Convention  of  1843  ;  the  Address  to  the  Peo- 
ple, published  by  the  Southern  and  Western  Liberty 
Convention  of  1845;  the  resolutions  and  address  adopted 
by  the  People's  State  Convention  of  Ohio  in  1848  ;  the 
National  Free-soil  platform  of  that  year ;  the  platform  of 
the  Free  Democracy  adopted  at  Pittsburg  in  1852 ;  and 
the  Appeal  of  the  Independent  Democrats  in  Congress 
to  the  People  of  the  United  States 8  in  1854,  bear  abun- 
dant testimony.  Equal  distinction  as  an  orator  cannot  be 
ascribed  to  Mr.  Chase.  A  slight  impediment  in  speech 
rendered  him,  like  the  great  Hebrew  emancipator,  "  of 
a  slow  tongue."  He  lacked,  moreover,  the  wit,  play  of 
fancy,  sympathetic  fervor,  and  charm  of  persuasion  so  es- 
sential, ordinarily,  to  political  eloquence.  "  Light  without 
heat "  was  how  a  statesman  who  became  one  of  his  senato- 
rial colleagues  characterised  Chase's  utterances,  and  the 
speaker  might  have  added,  in  this  connection  at  least, 
that  ancient  definition  of  equity  upon  which  the  phrase 
was  modeled  —  "  mind  without  passion."  The  mental  pro- 
cesses of  the  man,  on  the  stump  no  less  than  in  the  Senate, 
were  as  dignified  as  his  carriage.  Disdaining,  for  the  most 
part,  the  familiar  devices  of  rhetoric  and  elocution,  by 
which  anti-slavery  orators,  during  the  generation  before 
the  war,  usually  appealed  to  popular  emotions,  he  addressed 
himself  to  the  calm  judgment  of  his  audiences,  with  a 
freedom  from  personal  animus,  a  fidelity  to  clearly  stated 
facts,  and  a  force  of  logic,  as  refreshing  in  those  heated 


1 64      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

days  as  they  were  convincing.  When  it  is  recalled,  too, 
that  he  spoke  with  the  earnestness  of  profound  conviction 
and,  perforce,  with  a  deliberation  which  imparted  to  his 
words  values  almost  oracular,  we  can  comprehend  why 
his  speeches,  despite  their  shortcomings,  strengthened 
rather  than  impaired  his  hold  on  so  high  a  place  in  party 
leadership.  Not  less  important,  withal,  than  Mr.  Chase's 
intellectual  attainments  was  a  rich  endowment  of  "  that 
other  wisdom,"  to  use  his  own  words,  "  whose  name  is 
courage."  During  the  twenty  years  of  vehement  politics 
which  intervened  between  the  first  convention  of  the  Lib- 
erty-men and  the  triumph  of  the  Republican  Party,  he 
had  been  faithful  to  principles,  under  conditions  that  put 
his  pluck  severely  to  the  test.  For,  having  determined  a 
certain  course  to  be  the  right  one,  he  had  pursued  it  with 
an  energy  well-nigh  tireless,  and  a  singleness  of  purpose 
which  would  brook  no  compromise.  Deeply  religious  by 
temperament  and  "training,  he  recognized  in  his  creed 
an  ever-present  obligation  to  employ  great  powers  right- 
eously. Indeed,  his  private  as  well  as  his  public  life  was 
governed  by  so  pure  a  spirit  of  integrity,  on  so  lofty  a 
plane  of  duty,  that  men,  not  unmindful  at  the  same  time 
of  his  noble  bearing,  likened  him  to  a  Roman  statesman, 
in  the  golden  days  of  the  ancient  Republic. 

The  reverse  of  the  medal  was  not  so  pleasing.  Mr. 
Chase  had  the  defects  that  too  often  accompany  high 
qualities.  Those  very  virtues,  which  so  distinguished  him, 
cast  long  shadows  over  his  nature.  Conscientious  to  an 
extreme,  he  looked  upon  the  business  of  life  in  a  mood 
that  rendered  his  manner  austere  —  at  times,  even  stern. 
His  chiseled  features  usually  wore  an  expression,  at  least 
in  public,  of  rigid  reserve.  The  heavy,  firmly  pressed  lips 
rarely  relaxed,  and  the  light  of  humor  as  seldom  shone  in 
the  cold  blue-gray  eyes.  When,  at  infrequent  intervals,  he 
did  unbend,  his  efforts  to  be  gay  were  not  signally  success- 
ful ;  and  for  that  reason,  perhaps,  as  much  as  any  other, 
frivolity  in  public  men  met  with  his  disapproval.  A  de- 


AN   INDISPENSABLE   MAN         165 

scendant  of  Puritans  and  Scotch  Covenanters,  Chase  took 
himself,  no  less  than  his  work,  very  seriously  indeed.  The 
mass  of  diaries  and  letters  that  he  so  carefully  wrote,  and, 
for  the  most  part,  as  carefully  preserved,  reveal,  in  minute 
detail,  with  how  stately  a  tread  he  must  have  walked 
among  less  decorous  mortals.  If  he  threw  off  his  official 
robes  now  and  then,  to  exclaim  in  the  manner  of  Thur- 
low,  "  Lie  there,  Lord  Chancellor !  "  we  find  no  record  of 
the  fact.  Given  from  early  manhood,  moreover,  to  habits 
of  introspection,  Chase  became,  in  time,  so  self-centered 
and  so  egotistic  as  to  lose  that  sense  of  proportion  which 
saves  men  from  overrating  the  importance  of  small  things. 
Sensitive  to  an  uncommon  degree,  and  punctilious  as  to 
the  forms  of  either  social  or  official  intercourse,  he  was 
swift  to  resent  any  lapse  in  the  respect  which  he  consid- 
ered to  be  his  due.  For  this  martinet,  though  generally 
esteemed,  had  failed  to  attain  popularity.  Not  only  the 
people  at  large,  but  political  associates  as  well,  were,  in 
the  main,  repelled  by  his  unsympathetic  personality.  In 
fact,  with  possibly  one  or  two  exceptions,  there  sprang 
up  between  the  great  man  and  other  leading  Republicans 
no  warm  friendships.  Such  relations  rest,  by  reason  of 
their  very  nature,  upon  footings  of  equality,  which  Chase's 
assumption  of  his  own  superiority,  together  with  his  ever- 
pressing  ambition  to  stand  a  little  higher  than  those  around 
him,  put  out  of  the  question.  He  was  genial  enough,  it  is 
true,  at  his  own  fireside,  toward  the  family  that  almost 
worshiped  him,  as  well  as  toward  the  friends  and  politi- 
cians who  were  willing  to  do  him  homage.  Especially 
was  this  so  in  the  case  of  certain  brilliant  young  men, 
whose  devotion  he  repaid  with  affectionate  patronage  ;  yet 
hardly  less  cordial,  it  must  be  admitted,  was  the  attitude 
of  their  "  chief  "  —  if  we  may  use  the  title  in  which  Chase 
delighted  —  toward  the  unscrupulous  self-seekers,  syco- 
phants, and  scamps,  who  easily  played  upon  his  vanity. 
An  almost  childish  susceptibility  to  flattery  so  warped  his 
judgment  of  character  that  he  could  with  difficulty  be 


1 66       LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF   MEN 

brought  to  see  faults  in  any  of  the  persons  who  admired 
or  supported  him.  And  what,  after  all,  if  some  of  his 
followers  were  unworthy?  —  "'The  immortal  gods,'"  he 
seemed  to  say,  '"accept  the  meanest  altars' ;  why  not  I?" 
Incense,  whether  burned  by  good  men  or  bad,  was  equally 
grateful  to  his  nostrils,  even  while  it  enveloped  him  in  an 
atmosphere  of  adulation,  through  which  the  wisest  path 
was  not  always  discernible.  Betrayed  repeatedly  into  error 
by  the  imperious  temper  thus  developed,  Chase,  as  a  rule, 
knew  no  will  among  his  associates  but  his  own.  Indeed, 
the  lesson  of  occasional  subordination,  important  as  it  is 
to  those  who  would  command,  he  had  entirely  failed  to 
learn.  So  imbued  was  he  with  a  sense  of  his  superiority, 
and  so  accustomed  to  its  unquestioned  recognition,  that 
when,  in  his  fiftyfourth  year,  he  reluctantly  became  Mr. 
Lincoln's  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  he  might  most  fitly 
have  been  described,  as  to  certain  minor  aspects  of  his 
character,  at  least,  by  the  homely  word  —  spoiled. 

Unfortunately  for  hunself,  as  well  as  for  the  administra- 
tion of  which  he  formed  a  part,  Mr.  Chase's  proneness  to 
assert  himself  was,  as  in  Seward's  case,  heightened  by  the 
conditions  under  which  he  entered  upon  his  duties.  Suc- 
ceeding to  the  depleted  treasury  and  the  heavily  increased 
national  debt  that  constituted  together  an  important  con- 
tribution of  the  Buchanan  regime  to  the  Confederate 
cause,  he  found  the  credit  of  the  government  seriously 
impaired.  Before  measures  for  its  restoration  could  be 
taken,  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  cut  the  country  in 
two,  swept  the  South  with  its  wealth  of  staples  out  of  the 
Union,  paralyzed  trade  for  a  time,  bankrupted  many  of 
the  northern  merchants,  whose  accounts  were  repudiated 
by  their  customers  in  the  seceded  States,  and  brought  Mr. 
Chase  —  unprepared  as  he  was  by  adequate  training  or 
experience  —  face  to  face  with  a  problem  as  perplexing  as 
any  that  has  ever  tried  the  sagacity  of  a  finance  minister. 
Sir  Robert  Peel's  famous  description  of  Baring,  "  seated 
on  an  empty  chest,  by  the  pool  of  bottomless  deficiency, 


AN  INDISPENSABLE  MAN        167 

fishing  for  a  budget,"  fitted  the  American  Secretary  to  a 
nicety.  How,  under  existing  circumstances,  he  could  raise 
funds  for  what  proved  to  be  the  most  costly  military 
struggle  in  history,  was  the  question.  The  average  re- 
quirements throughout  the  war  of  over  $ 2,000,000  a  day 
could  not  be  supplied,  to  any  extent,  by  foreign  loans. 
European  bankers  —  some  of  them  in  sympathy  with  the 
Confederacy,  others  in  doubt  as  to  Union  success  —  closed 
their  coffers,  at  least  during  a  considerable  part  of  the 
conflict,  against  northern  securities.  Nothing,  in  conse- 
quence, was  left  to  Mr.  Chase,  for  a  time,  but  the  crippled 
resources  of  the  loyal  States.  As  even  these  means  were 
in  the  hands  of  a  people  unaccustomed  to  direct  taxation 
and  prejudiced  against  public  debt,  some  conception  may 
be  formed  as  to  the  magnitude  of  his  task.  That  this 
was  well  performed  must  be  conceded,  notwithstanding 
adverse,  and  in  the  main  valid  criticism  by  experts  on 
the  economic  soundness  of  certain  measures.  These  mea- 
sures served  with  others,  be  it  remembered,  to  supply 
the  government's  seemingly  unlimited  wants  —  to  outdo, 
in  fact,  the  marvels  of  Fortunatus  and  his  inexhaustible 
purse.  For,  from  the  money-bag  in  the  chapbook  ro- 
mance, coin  could  presumably  be  taken  out  only  through 
the  opening  by  which  it  had  passed  in  ;  but  "  the  spigot 
in  Uncle  Abe's  barrel,"  as  Mr.  Chase  dolefully  expressed 
it,  was  "  twice  as  big  as  the  bung-hole." 

The  rich  stream,  nevertheless,  did  not  run  dry,  neither 
did  it  submerge  the  nation  in  that  flood  of  financial  dis- 
aster, which  was  feared  by  many  Americans,  and  periodi- 
cally predicted  by  the  most  influential  organs  of  British 
public  opinion.  As  it  happened,  these  discouragements 
merely  rendered  more  brilliant  the  eventual  triumphs  of 
the  Treasury  —  triumphs  due,  in  no  small  degree,  be  it 
said,  to  the  patriotism  of  the  northern  people,  the  victo- 
ries of  Union  armies,  and  the  cooperation  of  a  loyal  Con- 
gress ;  yet  credited,  naturally  enough,  to  the  department 
of  finance,  and,  above  all,  to  the  statesman  at  its  head. 


1 68       LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

Never  before  had  even  he  drunk  so  deeply  of  the  spark- 
ling cup.  Men  compared  him  with  Turgot  and  Necker, 
with  Hamilton  and  Gallatin.  Indeed,  some  of  his  admir- 
ers, abroad  as  well  as  at  home,  indulged  in  extravagancies 
of  praise  that  might  have  enlarged  the  self-esteem  of  a 
statesman  less  egotistic  than  Salmon  P.  Chase. 

If  anything  was  lacking  to  confirm  the  Secretary's  be- 
lief in  his  own  importance,  it  was  supplied  by  the  Presi- 
dent himself.  Mr.  Lincoln  had  neither  capacity  nor  taste 
for  financiering.  The  science  of  dollars  and  cents  is  not 
likely  to  interest  a  man  who  defines  wealth,  as  he  did,  to 
be  "  simply  a  superfluity  of  what  we  don't  need."  His 
business  undertakings,  in  early  life,  had  been  signally 
unsuccessful,  —  to  such  a  degree,  in  fact,  that  upon  the 
occasion  of  his  first  election  to  the  Illinois  legislature,  he 
had  to  borrow  the  money  for  a  presentable  suit  of  clothes, 
and  his  fare  to  the  Capital.  Twenty-six  years  later,  a  busy 
and  what  should,  at  the  same  time,  have  been  a  lucrative 
practice  had  not  netted  enough  cash  to  defray  the  ex- 
penses of  his  inauguration  journey.9  So,  by  a  significant 
coincidence,  he  had  been  under  the  necessity  of  traveling 
to  Washington  as  he  had  to  Vandalia,  on  a  friendly  loan. 
Lincoln's  deficiency  in  what  his  friend  and  former  part- 
ner, William  H.  Herndon,  termed  "  money  sense "  was 
frankly  summed  up  by  the  President  himself  one  clay, 
during  a  period  of  financial  stress,  when  Chase  desired  to 
introduce  to  him  a  delegation  of  bankers,  who  were  assem- 
bled to  discuss  an  important  phase  of  the  money  question. 

"  Money !  "  exclaimed  Mr.  Lincoln,  "  I  don't  know 
anything  about  money !  I  never  had  enough  of  my  own 
to  fret  me,  and  I  have  no  opinion  about  it  any  way." 10 

To  another  committee  of  financiers,  that  waited  on  him 
to  find  fault  with  the  legal-tender  law,  he  said  :  — 

"  Go  to  Secretary  Chase  ;  he  is  managing  the  finances." 

In  fact,  the  administration  of  the  Treasury  had,  wisely, 
from  the  beginning,  been  entrusted  entirely  to  the  head 
of  the  department,  who,  as  long  as  he  supplied  the  re- 


AN   INDISPENSABLE   MAN         169 

quired  funds,  was  left,  for  ways  and  means,  to  his  own 
fertile  devices.  Nor  were  those  ways,  in  every  respect, 
according  to  usage.  The  very  first  treasury  bill,  drawn 
by  Mr.  Chase  and  enacted  by  Congress,  at  its  special 
session  in  July,  1861,  empowered  him  solely  to  effect 
certain  loans,  though  such  authority  had  invariably  been 
conferred  theretofore  upon  the  President  and  the  Secre- 
tary of  the  Treasury,  jointly.  This  innovation,  involving 
an  extraordinary  transfer  of  executive  functions,  charac- 
terized all  similar  enactments  during  Chase's  incumbency; 
yet  Mr.  Lincoln,  with  that  freedom  from  self-assertion 
which  is  already  so  familiar  to  us,  raised  no  objection. 
Contenting  himself  with  some  such  comment  as,  "You 
understand  these  things  —  I  do  not,"  he  adopted  his 
purse-bearer's  monetary  recommendations,  for  the  most 
part,  as  they  were  laid  before  him,  without  question.  He 
even  permitted  Mr.  Chase,  it  is  said,  to  write  some  of  the 
financial  paragraphs  in  his  messages.  Be  that  as  it  may, 
whatever  legislation  the  Secretary  deemed  essential  was 
vigorously  urged  by  the  President,  not  only  in  his  formal 
communications  to  Congress,  but  in  his  frequent  confer- 
ences as  well  with  the  influential  members  of  both  Houses. 
This  cooperation,  together  with  a  suggestion,  now  and 
then,  modestly  offered,  made  up  the  sum  of  the  Execu- 
tive's customary  attention  to  the  operations  of  the  Trea- 
sury, which,  despite  its  importance,  was  thus  the  only  one 
of  the  great  departments  of  the  government  not  kept 
under  his  constant  supervision. 

Mr.  Lincoln's  practice  of  non-interference  in  financial 
affairs  was  not  without  its  exception.  But  his  single  de- 
viation from  the  rule  —  and  only  one  authentic  instance 
has  come  under  the  writer's  notice  — serves  in  more  than 
a  rhetorical  sense  to  prove  that  rule.  For  it  reveals  how 
ignorant  the  President  was  concerning  treasury  matters, 
while  it  confirms  our  impression  of  the  latitude  habitu- 
ally enjoyed  by  his  able  Secretary.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  incident  evinces  how  ready  was  the  President,  when 


i yo      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

aroused,  to  exercise  his  authority,  even  in  so  unfamiliar  a 
field,  with  firmness.  He  was  chatting  one  day  in  his  office 
with  his  old  friend,  Marshal  Lamon,  when  the  conversa- 
tion turned  on  the  greenbacks,  then  for  some  time  in 
circulation.  Mr.  Lincoln's  visitor  asked  him  whether  he 
knew  how  the  currency  was  made. 

"  Yes,"  answered  the  President,  "  I  think  it  is  about  — 
as  the  lawyers  would  say  —  in  the  following  manner,  to 
wit :  the  engraver  strikes  off  the  sheets,  passes  them  over 
to  the  Register  of  the  currency,  who  places  his  earmarks 
upon  them,  signs  them,  hands  them  over  to  Father  Spinner, 
who  then  places  his  wonderful  signature  at  the  bottom, 
and  turns  them  over  to  Mr.  Chase,  who,  as  Secretary  of 
the  United  States  Treasury,  issues  them  to  the  public  as 
money,  —  and  may  the  good  Lord  help  any  fellow  that 
does  n't  take  all  he  can  honestly  get  of  them !  "  Pulling 
a  five-dollar  greenback  from  his  pocket,  he  said,  with  a 
twinkle  in  his  eye,  "  Look  at  Spinner's  signature !  Was 
there  ever  anything  like  it  on  earth?  Yet  it  is  unmis- 
takable. No  one  will  ever  be  able  to  counterfeit  it." 

"  But,"  said  the  Marshal,  "  you  certainly  don't  suppose 
that  Spinner  actually  wrote  his  name  on  that  bill,  do 
you  ?  " 

41  Certainly  I  do  ;  why  not  ?  "  was  the  reply. 

Mr.  Lamon  asked,  "  How  much  of  this  currency  have 
we  afloat?" 

Mr.  Lincoln  stated  the  amount. 

''How  many  times,"  continued  his  friend,  "do  you 
think  a  man  can  write  a  signature  like  Spinner's  in  the 
course  of  twenty-four  hours  ?  " 

The  smile  left  the  President's  countenance.  He  put 
the  greenback  into  his  pocket  and  walked  the  floor.  After 
a  while  he  stopped,  took  a  long  breath,  and  said :  "  This 
thing  frightens  me  !  "  Summoning  a  messenger,  he  sent 
for  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  Upon  Mr.  Chase's 
arrival,  Mr.  Lincoln  explained  the  occasion  of  his  alarm, 
and  asked  for  a  detailed  description  of  how  the  money 


AN   INDISPENSABLE   MAN         171 

was  handled  in  the  process  of  manufacture.  When  the 
Secretary  had  complied  with  this  request,  the  President 
expressed  his  opinion  that  there  were  not  sufficient  checks 
against  robbery;  but  Mr.  Chase  insisted  that  the  system 
had  all  the  safeguards  which  he  could  devise.  "In  the 
nature  of  things,"  said  he,  "  somebody  must  be  trusted  in 
this  emergency.  You  have  entrusted  me,  and  Mr.  Spinner 
is  entrusted  with  untold  millions,  and  we  have  to  trust  our 
subordinates."  Words  waxed  warm  between  the  two, 
when  Mr.  Lincoln  said,  with  some  feeling :  — 

"  Don't  think  that  I  am  doubting  or  could  doubt  your 
integrity,  or  that  of  Mr.  Spinner  ;  nor  am  I  finding  fault 
with  either  of  you.  But  it  strikes  me  that  this  thing  is  all 
wrong,  and  dangerous.  I  and  the  country  know  you  and 
Mr.  Spinner,  but  we  don't  know  your  subordinates,  who  are 
great  factors  in  making  this  money ;  and  have  the  power 
to  bankrupt  the  government  in  an  hour.  Yet  there  seems 
to  be  no  protection  against  a  duplicate  issue  of  every  bill 
struck,  and  I  can  see  no  way  of  detecting  duplicity  until 
we  come  to  redeem  the  currency ;  and  even  then,  the 
duplicate  cannot  be  told  from  the  original."  u 

The  President  prevailed.  As  a  result  of  the  discussion, 
Mr.  Chase  made  elaborate  efforts  to  secure  an  improved 
system  of  checks  against  fraud  or  error.  Calling  upon 
the  Chief  of  the  Currency  Bureau  for  the  outline  of  a 
feasible  plan,  he  submitted  it,  after  revision  by  himself, 
to  a  special  commission,  consisting  of  the  Acting  Assist- 
ant Secretary,  the  Register,  and  the  First  Comptroller. 
Their  report  was,  upon  its  receipt,  referred  back  to  them 
for  further  consideration ;  and  Senator  Sprague,  because 
of  his  expert  knowledge,  was  added  to  their  number. 
The  enlarged  commission,  however,  merely  confirmed  the 
findings  of  its  predecessor.  Whereupon  all  the  documents 
were  placed,  for  final  review,  in  the  hands  of  the  Assist- 
ant Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  who  had  recently  returned 
from  a  study  of  the  safeguards  employed  in  the  Bank  of 
England  and  in  the  Bank  of  France.  Upon  his  observa- 


172      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

tions  abroad  and  the  suggestions  of  the  commission  were 
based  a  new  body  of  rules  for  the  Currency  Bureau.12 

Ample  as  was  the  scope  of  Mr.  Chase's  authority  in 
financial  matters,  it  failed  to  fill  the  measure  of  his  ad- 
ministrative ambitions.  He  must  have  been  dazzled  with 
the  power  conferred  upon  him,  in  his  own  proper  sphere  ; 
for  he  believed  himself,  again  like  Seward,  capable  of 
dominating  other  departments,  as  well.  Particularly  may 
this  be  said  of  the  War  Office,  over  which,  throughout 
his  cabinet  career,  he  strove  to  exert  a  certain  influence. 
"  I  have  been  studying  the  art  of  war,"  he  once  said.  "  I 
can  find  nothing  in  it  but  a  calculation  of  chances  and  a 
quick  eye  for  topography.  Were  I  not  so  near-sighted,  I 
would  be  tempted  to  resign  my  place  as  Secretary  for  a 
command  in  the  field."  13  So  persistently,  indeed,  was  the 
martial  purpose  pursued,  that  no  treasury  duties,  however 
exacting,  were  allowed  to  stand  in  its  way.  Nor  did  the 
hand  on  the  purse  relax,  while  the  other  hand  reached 
for  the  sword.  With  both  in  his  grasp,  Chase  would  truly 
have  been  prepared 

"  to  advise  how  War  may,  best  npheld, 
Move  by  her  two  main  nerves,  iron  and  gold, 
In  all  her  equipage." 

He  might  even  have  gathered  strength  enough  for  what 
he  aspired  to  be  —  the  essential  genius  of  the  conflict.  His 
hopes  in  this  direction  Mr.  Lincoln,  still  further,  unavoid- 
ably fed.  The  President  not  only  found  it  expedient,  at 
times,  to  consult  with  the  ever-ready  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  on  questions  purely  military ;  but  he  employed 
him  also,  as  occasion  required,  on  business  which  belonged 
within  the  province  of  the  Wrar  Department.  Other  mem- 
bers of  the  cabinet,  it  is  true,  were  called,  now  and  then, 
to  the  relief  of  their  colleague  in  that  overburdened  office ; 
yet  none  of  them,  we  may  safely  say,  were  so  busy  over 
its  affairs  as  Mr.  Chase.  To  him,  and  not  to  Secretary 
Cameron,  was  committed  the  task  of  framing  certain  offi- 
cial orders  for  the  enlistment  of  troops ;  to  his  direction 


AN    INDISPENSABLE   MAN         173 

military  matters  in  the  western  Border  States  were,  during 
the  earlier  stages  of  the  war,  largely  entrusted  ;  and  to 
his  recommendations  might  have  been  traced  important 
changes  in  the  fortunes  of  more  than  one  general  officer. 
The  confidential  relations  that  he  managed  to  establish 
with  some  of  the  commanders,  no  less  than  his  familiarity 
with  their  operations  in  the  field,  led  both  the  President 
and  the  Secretary  of  War  to  ask  his  aid,  as  a  go-between, 
several  times  when  misunderstandings  or  delicate  personal 
questions  arose.  When  it  was  deemed  necessary,  more- 
over, for  a  council  of  war  to  interrogate  General  McClel- 
lan  about  his  plans,  Mr.  Chase  performed  the  ungrateful 
office ;  when  General  McDowell,  to  his  disappointment, 
was  ordered  back  from  Fredericksburg,  during  the  Penin-, 
sular  campaign,  Chase  was  despatched  to  the  front,  with 
explanations ;  when  Lincoln  and  Stanton  made  what  our 
warlike  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  termed  their  "  brilliant 
week's  campaign  "  against  Norfolk,  he  accompanied  them; 
and  when  the  President  held  his  momentous  midnight 
conference,  after  Rosecrans's  disaster  at  Chickamauga,  he 
was  one  of  the  three  cabinet  ministers  present.  Mr.  Lin- 
coln, on  several  occasions,  even  went  so  far  as  to  direct 
generals-in-chief  to  discuss  their  projects  with  Mr.  Chase ; 
and  still  that  gentleman  was  far  from  satisfied. 

Considerable  as  was  the  Secretary's  part  in  these  and 
similar  transactions,  they  bore  together  but  a  small  ratio 
to  all  the  affairs  of  the  War  Department  on  which  he 
volunteered  assistance  or  advice.  To  decline  the  former 
and  disregard  the  latter  came  as  natural  to  the  President, 
at  some  times,  as  to  avail  himself  of  them  at  others. 
Confident  of  his  own  strength,  he  held  Chase,  as  we  have 
seen,  by  a  free  rein ;  but  whenever  they  got  too  far  from 
their  course,  the  lines  stiffened,  and  one  masterful  twist 
of  the  wrist  brought  the  honorable  Secretary  back  to  his 
work.  Like  Seward,  Chase  was  made  to  feel  the  power 
which  lurked  in  that  slack  hand ;  unlike  him,  he  never 
became  reconciled  to  its  sway.  From  the  very  outset,  the 


174      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

man  in  the  Treasury  chafed  under  whatever  limitations 
were  placed  upon  his  authority,  but  without  avail.  How 
helplessly  he  kicked  against  the  pricks,  his  own  letters 
and  diaries  reveal,  at  every  turn.  A  few  extracts  from 
among  many  instances  may  not  be  out  of  place  here. 

The  administration,  to  begin  with,  had  hardly  gotten 
under  way  before  Mr.  Chase's  impatience  at  what  he 
called  "  the  Micawber  policy  of  waiting  for  something  to 
turn  up  "  found  vent  in  a  letter  to  the  President. 

"  Let  me  beg  you  to  remember,"  it  read,  in  a  style 
strangely  suggestive  of  Seward's  "  Thoughts,"  "  that  the 
disunionists  have  anticipated  us  in  everything,  and  that 
as  yet  we  have  accomplished  nothing  but  the  destruction 
of  our  own  property.  Let  me  beg  you  to  remember,  also, 
that  it  has  been  a  darling  object  with  the  disunionists  to 
secure  the  passage  of  a  secession  ordinance  by  Maryland. 
The  passage  of  that  ordinance  will  be  the  signal  for  the 
entry  of  disunion  forces  into  Maryland.  It  will  give  a 
color  of  law  and  regularity  to  rebellion,  and  thereby  triple 
its  strength.  The  custom-house  in  Baltimore  will  be  seized, 
and  Fort  McHenry  attacked  —  perhaps  taken.  What 
next?  Do  not,  I  pray  you,  let  this  new  success  of  treason 
be  inaugurated,  in  the  presence  of  American  troops.  Save 
us  from  this  new  humiliation.  A  word  to  the  brave  old 
commanding  general  will  do  the  work  of  prevention. 
You,  alone,  can  give  the  word."  " 

The  "  word "  was  not  given  ;  nor  is  it  known  what 
reply,  if  any,  Mr.  Lincoln  made  to  this  querulous  mes- 
sage. Its  tone  was  ominous,  as  well  as  discordant,  for 
many  other  strictures,  equally  severe  or  severer,  followed 
from  the  same  pen.  To  a  private  correspondent,  some 
months  thereafter,  Chase  made  this  comment :  — 

"  It  has  been  an  error,  I  think,  to  push  forward  our 
whole  army  when  two  thirds  of  it,  skilfully  handled, 
would  have  effected  the  objects  gained  by  the  whole. 
But  the  great  defect  in  the  operations  of  the  war  has 
been  a  lack  of  vigor  and  celerity  in  movement.  To  make 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN         175 

up  for  this,  we  accumulate  immense  forces  at  particular 
points,  and  wait  until  the  enemy  retreats,  and  then  occupy 
his  deserted  quarters !  "  15 

To  another  he  wrote,  still  later,  in  a  similar  strain :  — 

"  We  have  not  accomplished  what  we  ought  to  have 
accomplished.  We  have  put  small  forces  where  large 
forces  were  needed,  and  have  failed  to  improve  advan- 
tages —  the  advantages  we  obtained.  We  have  preferred 
generals  who  do  little  with  much,  to  generals  who  do 
much  with  little.  We  blame  and  praise  with  equal  want 
of  reason  and  judgment."  16 

In  his  diary  he  noted,  at  about  the  same  time :  — 

"Ten  days  of  battle  and  then  such  changes — changes 
in  which  it  is  difficult  to  see  the  public  good.  How  singu- 
larly all  our  worst  defeats  have  followed  administrative 
cr — ,  no,  blunders ! " 17 

Those  changes  were  evidently  not  made  upon  Mr. 
Chase's  recommendations.  Indeed,  the  President's  re- 
peated disregard  of  his  finance  minister's  military  opinions 
evoked  that  officer's  bitter  faultfinding.  He  ascribed  dis- 
asters to  the  neglect  of  his  advice ;  and  successes,  he  as 
truculently  traced  to  its  influence. 

What  vexed  Chase,  withal,  more  than  Mr.  Lincoln's 
failures  to  heed  his  counsels,  was  the  fact  that  suitable 
opportunities  for  giving  them  were  so  infrequent.  Com- 
plaints on  this  score  abounded  in  his  letters,  especially  in 
those  addressed  to  his  friends  at  home.  To  one  of  them  he 
wrote :  — 

"  Since  the  incoming  of  General  Halleck  I  have  known 
but  little  more  of  the  progress  of  the  war  than  any 
outsider,  —  I  mean  so  far  as  influencing  it  goes.  My 
recommendations,  before  he  came  in,  were  generally 
disregarded,  and  since  have  been  seldom  ventured.  In 
two  or  three  conversations  I  did  insist  on  the  removal  of 
McClellan,  and  the  substitution  of  an  abler  and  more 
vigorous  and  energetic  leader ;  on  the  clearing  out  of  the 
Mississippi,  and  the  expulsion  of  the  rebels  from  East 


176      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

Tennessee,  all  of  which  might  have  been  done.  But, 
though  heard  I  was  not  heeded."  18 

To  another :  — 

"  I  am  not  responsible  for  the  management  of  the  war, 
and  have  no  voice  in  it,  except  that  I  am  not  forbidden 
to  make  suggestions,  and  do  so  now  and  then,  when  I 
cannot  help  it."  19 

And  to  still  another :  — 

"  Though  charged  with  the  responsibility  of  providing 
means  for  the  vast  expenditures  of  the  war,  I  have  little 
more  voice  in  its  conduct  than  a  stranger  to  the  adminis- 
tration —  perhaps  not  so  considerable  a  voice  as  some 
who  are,  in  law  at  least,  strangers  to  it.  I  should  be  very 
well  satisfied  with  this  state  of  things,  if  I  saw  the  war 
prosecuted  with  vigor  and  success.  I  am  only  dissatisfied 
with  it  because  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  if  my  judg- 
ment had  more  weight,  it  would  be  so  prosecuted." 20 

To  Governor  Brough,  after  the  terrible  slaughter  of  the 
Wilderness  and  Spottsylvania  Court  House,  Mr.  Chase 
thus  unburdened  himself  :  — 

"  My  anxiety  is  very  great ;  but  departmental  adminis- 
tration allows  me  no  voice  in  military  matters  —  not  even 
in  those  which  most  nearly  concern  the  Treasury  —  and  I 
can  therefore  only  wait  and  pray  and  hope."  21 

There  were  cabinet  meetings,  it  is  true,  but  Mr.  Chase's 
conception  of  how  they  should  be  conducted  differed 
widely  from  that  of  the  President.  This  disagreement  the 
Secretary  emphasized,  in  several  spirited  letters.  One  to 
Senator  John  Sherman  read  :  — 

"Since  General  Halleck  has  been  here  the  conduct 
of  the  war  has  been  abandoned  to  him  by  the  President 
almost  absolutely.  We  —  who  are  called  members  of  the 
cabinet,  but  are  in  reality  only  separate  heads  of  depart- 
ments, meeting  now  and  then  for  talk  on  whatever  hap- 
pens to  come  uppermost,  not  for  grave  consultation  on 
matters  concerning  the  salvation  of  the  country  —  we  have 
as  little  to  do  with  it  as  if  we  were  heads  of  factories 


AN   INDISPENSABLE   MAN         177 

supplying  shoes  or  cloth.  No  regular  and  systematic 
reports  of  what  is  done  are  made,  I  believe,  even  to  the 
President  —  certainly  not  to  the  so-called  cabinet.  Of 
course  we  may  hope  for  the  best  —  that  privilege  remains. 
As  outsiders,  too,  I  suppose  we  may  criticise,  but  I  prefer 
to  forego  that  privilege.  It  is  painful,  however,  to  hear 
complaints  of  remissness,  delays,  discords,  dangers,  and 
to  feel  that  there  must  be  ground  for  such  complaints, 
and  to  know  that  one  has  no  power  to  remedy  the  evils 
and  yet  is  thought  to  have."  22 

To  Horace  Greeley  our  disgruntled  minister  wrote :  — 

"  It  seems  to  me  that  in  this  government  the  President 
and  his  cabinet  ought  to  be  well  advised  of  all  matters 
vital  to  the  military  and  civil  administration ;  but  each 
one  of  us,  to  use  a  presidential  expression,  turns  his  own 
machine,  with  almost  no  comparison  of  views  or  consulta- 
tion of  any  kind.  It  seems  to  me  all  wrong  and  I  have 
tried  very  hard  to  have  it  otherwise  —  unavailingly." 23 

Commenting  on  foreign  intervention  in  Santo  Domingo 
and  Mexico,  he  wrote  to  the  Rev.  Dr.  Leavitt,  one  of  the 
editors  of  the  New  York  Independent:  — 

"  Had  there  been  here  an  administration  in  the  true 
sense  of  the  word  —  a  President  conferring  with  his  cab- 
inet and  taking  their  united  judgments,  and  with  their  aid 
enforcing  activity,  economy,  and  energy,  in  all  depart- 
ments of  public  service  —  we  could  have  spoken  boldly 
and  defied  the  world.  But  our  condition  here  has  always 
been  very  different.  I  preside  over  the  funnel ;  everybody 
else,  and  especially  the  Secretaries  of  War  and  the  Navy, 
over  the  spigots  —  and  keep  them  well  open,  too.  Mr. 
Seward  conducts  the  foreign  relations  with  very  little  let 
or  help  from  anybody.  There  is  no  unity  and  no  system, 
except  so  far  as  it  is  departmental." 24 

That  the  people  around  the  spigots  paid  so  little  at- 
tention to  the  important  functionary  at  the  funnel  was 
especially  irritating  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  He 
scolded,  in  turn,  the  successive  heads  of  the  War  Depart- 


1 78      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

ment,  on  the  score  of  extravagance ;  yet  it  should  be 
observed  that  his  customary  attitude  toward  them  was 
friendly.  For  here,  as  elsewhere,  the  prime  offender,  in 
his  eyes,  was  Mr.  Lincoln.  To  Secretary  Cameron,  Chase 
complained :  — 

"  The  want  of  success  of  our  armies,  and  the  difficulties 
of  our  financial  operations,  have  not  been  in  consequence 
of  a  want  or  excess  of  men,  but  for  want  of  systematic 
administration.  If  the  lack  of  economy,  and  the  absence 
of  accountability,  are  allowed  to  prevail  in  the  future  as 
in  the  past,  bankruptcy,  and  the  success  of  the  rebellion, 
will  be  necessary  consequences."  K 

After  the  War  Department  had,  for  a  considerable  time, 
been  under  Mr.  Stanton's  direction,  Mr.  Chase  wrote  to 
a  friend,  in  Ohio  :  — 

"  Nothing  except  the  waste  of  life  is  more  painful  in 
this  war  than  the  absolutely  reckless  waste  of  means.  A 
very  large  part  of  the  frauds  which  disgrace  us  may  be 
traced  to  the  want  of  systematic  supervision  ;  and  yet 
what  encouragement  is  there  to  endeavors  toward  economy? 
Such  endeavors  league  against  him  who  makes  them  all 
the  venality  and  corruption  which  is  interested  in  extrav- 
agance. Most,  if  not  all,  the  bitter  attacks  made  upon  me 
have  originated  in  the  spite  of  the  people  whose  interests 
were  thought  to  be  affected  by  my  efforts  to  keep  things  in 
the  right  direction  and  under  economical  management."  M 

To  another  friend  he  thus  lamented :  — 

"  There  has  been  enormous  waste  and  profusion,  grow- 
ing out  of  high  pay  and  excessive  indulgence.  All  these 
causes  tend  to  demoralization,  and  we  are  demoralized.  I 
cannot  go  into  particulars,  but  the  instances  abound.  It 
is  some  consolation  to  me  that  my  voice  and,  so  far  as 
opportunity  has  allowed,  my  example  has  been  steadily 
opposed  to  all  this.  I  have  urged  my  ideas  on  the  Presi- 
dent and  my  associates,  till  I  begin  to  feel  that  they  are 
irksome  to  the  first,  and  to  one  or  two,  at  least,  of  the 
second."  27 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN         179 

In  a  letter  to  General  Hooker,  the  same  busy  corre- 
spondent thus  frees  his  mind :  — 

"  There  has  been  a  deal  of  talk  about  recalling  you,  and 
placing  you  in  command  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac, 
which  one  of  the  chaplains,  in  a  recently  published  let- 
ter, calls,  not  altogether  without  reason,  '  This  poor,  old, 
strategy-possessed  army.'  I  wish  it  might  be  done.  But, 
of  course,  my  wishes  go  for  little  in  such  matters.  What 
right,  indeed,  has  a  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  whose  busi- 
ness it  is  to  provide  money  for  the  people  to  spend,  to 
have  any  wishes  at  all  about  the  results  of  the  expendi- 
ture? Is  not  that  exclusively  the  concern  of  the  President 
and  of  Congress  ?  I  suppose  I  ought  to  shut  my  eyes  and 
suppress  my  feelings,  but  really  it  is  a  little  hard,  when 
one  thinks  one  sees  how  much  might  be  economized  of 
action,  power,  and  resources,  not  to  say  something  of  what 
he  thinks  and  feels."  w 

Hooker  was  but  one  of  several  officers  to  whom  Secre- 
tary Chase  disparaged  the  administration  of  which  he,  him- 
self, formed  a  confidential  part.  Heedless  of  the  impropri- 
ety, at  times  even  the  disloyalty  of  his  course,  he  warmly 
condoled  with  the  generals  who  brought  him  their  griev- 
ances, real  or  fancied,  against  the  President.  Fruitless 
opposition  to  Mr.  Lincoln's  policy,  in  one  instance,  more- 
over, led  Chase  to  the  extreme  of  urging  upon  two  of 
his  military  correspondents  out-and-out  insubordination. 
This  misstep  had  its  origin,  to  state  it  briefly,  in  the 
vexed  question  of  emancipation.  Mr.  Chase  persistently 
advised  that  commanders  should  be  permitted  to  free  and 
enlist  the  slaves  within  their  lines ;  Mr.  Lincoln  decided 
otherwise.  When  the  President,  in  the  spring  of  1862, 
annulled  General  Hunter's  proclamation,  it  was  in  spite  of 
Chase's  earnest  appeal  to  the  contrary.  So  curtly  was  the 
Secretary  brushed  aside  that  he  gave  vent  to  his  disap- 
pointment in  even  harsher  terms  than  ordinarily.  "  I  have 
never,"  he  wrote  to  Greeley,  "  been  so  sorely  tried,  in  all 
*hat  I  have  seen  in  the  shape  of  irregularities,  assumptions 


180        LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

beyond  the  law,  extravagances,  deference  to  generals  and 
reactionists  which  I  cannot  approve  .  .  .  as  by  the  nulli- 
fying of  Hunter's  proclamation." M  But  it  was  not  in 
Chase's  nature  to  accept  a  defeat ;  so  we  find  him,  a  few 
weeks  later,  still  trying  to  displace  the  President's  policy 
by  his  own.  In  the  course  of  a  long  letter  to  General 
Butler,  at  New  Orleans,  he  wrote :  — 

"  I  shall  express  only  my  own  opinions ;  opinions,  how- 
ever, to  which  I  am  just  as  sure  the  masses  will  and  the 
politicians  must  come,  as  I  am  sure  that  both  politicians 
and  masses  have  come  to  opinions  expressed  by  me  when 
they  found  few  concurrents.  ...  If  some  prudential  con- 
sideration did  not  forbid,  I  should  at  once,  if  I  were  in  your 
place,  notify  the  slaveholders  of  Louisiana  that  hence- 
forth they  must  be  content  to  pay  their  laborers  wages. 
...  It  is  quite  true  that  such  an  order  could  not  be 
enforced  by  military  power  beyond  military  lines ;  but  it 
would  enforce  itself  by  degrees  a  good  way  beyond  them, 
and  would  make  the  extension  of  military  lines  compara- 
tively quite  easy.  It  may  be  said  that  such  an  order  would 
be  annulled.  I  think  not.  It  is  plain  enough  to  see  that 
the  annulling  of  Hunter's  order  was  a  mistake.  It  will 
not  be  repeated."80 

On  the  following  day,  Chase  wrote,  in  the  same  tenor, 
to  General  Pope,  commanding  the  Army  of  Virginia. 
This  letter  closed  with  :  — 

"  If  I  were  in  the  field,  I  would  let  every  man  understand 
that  no  man  loyal  to  the  Union  can  be  a  slave.  We  must 
come  to  this.  The  public  sentiment  of  the  world,  common- 
sense,  and  common  justice,  demand  it.  The  sooner  we 
respect  the  demand,  the  better  for  us  and  for  our  cause." 81 

With  the  unruly  spirit  that  inspired  these  futile  out- 
breaks now  and  then  mingled  something  very  like  despair. 
For  instance,  shortly  after  Mr.  Lincoln  had  reinstated 
General  McClellan,  in  the  teeth  of  vehement  protests 
from  Chase  and  others,  this  comment  was  confided  to  the 
diary :  — 


AN   INDISPENSABLE   MAN         181 

"  Expenses  are  enormous,  increasing  instead  of  dimin- 
ishing ;  and  the  ill-successes  in  the  field  have  so  affected 
government  stocks  that  it  is  impossible  to  obtain  money 
except  on  temporary  deposit.  ...  It  is  a  bad  state  of 
things  ;  but  neither  the  President,  his  counselors,  nor  his 
commanding  general  seem  to  care.  They  rush  on  from 
expense  to  expense,  and  from  defeat  to  defeat,  heedless 
of  the  abyss  of  bankruptcy  and  ruin  which  yawns  before 
us  —  so  easily  shunned  yet  seemingly  so  sure  to  engulf 
us.  May  God  open  the  eyes  of  those  who  control  us,  be- 
fore it  is  too  late  I"32 

And  a  letter  addressed,  some  months  later,  to  Wayne 
MoVeagh  contained  this  outburst :  — 

"  Oh,  for  a  vigorous,  earnest,  thorough  prosecution  of 
this  war !  for  a  speedy  and  complete  suppression  of  this 
rebellion  !  How  often  does  the  question  come  to  me  with 
terrific  force !  How  much  longer  can  the  strain,  which 
delay  and  extravagance  make,  be  endured  before  the 
links  of  credit  snap?  "  ^ 

The  precious  links  did  not  snap.  On  the  contrary,  as 
the  war  advanced,  they  became  —  with  an  occasional 
period  of  weakness  —  more  firmly  riveted  together.  But 
this  fact  apparently  made  no  impression  on  the  conduct 
of  the  minister  who  had  them  in  his  keeping  ;  as  he  con- 
tinued, to  the  end,  his  practice  of  petulant  and,  for  the 
most  part,  bootless  criticism.  In  season  and  out,  in  letters 
and  private  journals,  in  formal  council  and  chance  con- 
versation, whether  he  addressed  himself  to  members  of 
the  government  circle  or  to  rank  outsiders,  Chase  was  the 
severe  —  at  times  almost  hostile  —  censor  of  the  Presi- 
dent and  his  administration. 

In  fairness  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  it  must  be 
conceded  that  his  charges  of  extravagance  were,  especially 
during  certain  periods  of  unpreparedness  at  the  outbreak 
of  hostilities,  warranted  by  the  facts.  It  is  true,  moreover, 
that  the  operations  of  his  department  were,  at  times,  em- 
barrassed by  lack  of  success  in  the  field.  And  due  weight 


1 82      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

should  be  given  to  the  necessity  under  which  he  labored, 
or  believed  himself  to  labor,  for  combining  military  with 
financial  authority,  as  other  statesmen  in  the  world's  his- 
tory had  done  before  him.  His  chagrin  at  finding  his 
martial  activities  repressed  was  therefore  not  surprising, 
particularly  when  we  recall  the  temperament  of  the  man, 
and  the  expectations  which  must  have  been  fostered  by 
what  he  was  occasionally  called  upon  to  do  in  the  War 
Department,  no  less  than  by  the  extraordinary  powers 
conferred  upon  him  in  his  own  office.  Yet  these  things 
do  not  justify,  or  even  fully  explain,  the  animus  against 
the  President,  so  apparent  throughout  Chase's  cabinet 
career.  For  the  seed  of  that  antagonism  we  must  look 
below  the  surface  —  into  the  very  core  of  the  matter. 

Chase  never  entirely  forgave  Lincoln  the  latter's  vic- 
tory at  the  Chicago  Convention.  That  a  man  so  markedly 
his  inferior  in  education  and  public  achievements  should 
have  been  preferred  to  him  was  as  grievous  to  the  Ohio 
statesman's  self-love  as  it  was  irritating  to  his  sense  of 
equity.  That  this  man,  moreover,  when  he  came  to  the 
presidency,  should  persist  in  actually  running  the  admin- 
istration, while  his  brilliant  Secretary  of  the  Treasuiy  — 
so  willing  at  every  turn  to  relieve  him  of  the  burden  — 
remained  a  mere  head  of  department,  hardly  allayed  the 
minister's  resentment.  The  prejudice  engendered  in  the 
defeated  candidate  took  deeper  root  in  the  disappointed 
cabinet  minister.  Mr.  Chase's  failures,  withal,  to  sway  the 
President  in  military  affairs  —  numerous  and,  at  times, 
humiliating  though  they  were  —  did  not,  by  any  means, 
make  up  the  sum  of  his  rebuffs.  On  such  important 
subjects  as  privateering,  early  emancipation,  concessions 
to  the  Border  States,  and  martial  law  in  places  outside 
the  field  of  hostilities,  our  Secretary,  do  what  he  would, 
could  not  save  his  cherished  opinions  from  being  swept 
aside.  Here  again,  the  character,  or  fancied  character, 
of  the  chief  who  overruled  him  made  his  cup  of  subordi- 
nation doubly  bitter.  The  masterful  Chase  had  met  his 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN         183 

master,  yet  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  the  point  of 
admitting  it.  Indeed,  we  find  ourselves  wondering,  as  he 
returns  again  and  again  to  the  charge,  at  his  inability  to 
realize  how  completely  he  was  outclassed ;  but  the  riddle 
is  read  when  it  is  remembered  that  his  judgment  of  char- 
acter was  notably  defective.  This  constituted  what  may 
be  called  the  blind  side  of  his  make-up.  He  was,  in  fact, 
so  near-sighted  that  the  play  of  men's  features,  with  their 
tell-tale  disclosures,  was  lost  upon  him  ;  and  so  self-cen- 
tered, that  what  he  seemed  to  see  in  other  people  was,  too 
often,  the  mere  reflection  of  his  own  prepossessions  or  pre- 
judices. Thus  misguided,  —  to  say  nothing  of  the  concur- 
rent circumstances,  —  Chase  must  inevitably  have  under- 
rated Lincoln.  The  President  —  so  thought  his  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury  —  had  been  elevated  by  a  freak  of  fortune 
to  a  place  which  he  was  incapable  of  filling ;  and,  by  a 
similar  chance,  the  minister,  himself,  had  become  enlisted 
under  a  chief  who  at  every  point  in  his  bearing  seemed 
to  fall  far  below  that  courtly  functionary's  standards  of 
statesmanship.  Perhaps  Mr.  Chase,  learned  though  he 
was,  forgot  that  truly  great  rulers  make  their  own  stand- 
ards. At  all  events,  there  was  little,  if  anything,  in 
Lincoln's  simple  demeanor,  lack  of  culture,  disregard  of 
formality,  and  low-leveled  humor  to  warn  his  Secretary 
of  the  transcendent  genius  for  leadership  that,  almost 
unwittingly  to  itself,  was  working  out  a  great  destiny. 
Hence  Mr.  Chase  presents  the  phenomenon  of  encounter- 
ing at  every  turn  a  force  stronger  than  his  own,  and 
failing  entirely  to  recognize  its  existence.  He  had  been  a 
member  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  official  family  more  than  a  year 
and  a  half,  when  he  tactlessly  asked  a  general  officer, 
who  had  a  grievance  against  the  administration,  what  he 
thought  of  the  President.  The  officer  answered:  — 

"  A  man  irresolute,  but  of  honest  intentions ;  born  a 
poor  white  in  a  slave  State,  and,  of  course,  among  aris- 
tocrats ;  kind  in  spirit  and  not  envious,  but  anxious  for 
approval,  especially  of  those  to  whom  he  has  been  accus- 


1 84      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

tomed  to  look  up  —  hence  solicitous  of  support  of  the 
slaveholders  in  the  Border  States,  and  unwilling  to 
offend  them ;  without  the  large  mind  necessary  to  grasp 
great  questions,  uncertain  of  himself,  and  in  many  things 
ready  to  lean  too  much  on  others."  34 

The  sketch  must  have  been  in  harmony  with  our  Sec- 
retary's own  views,  for  he  transferred  it  carefully  to  his 
diary,  with  the  endorsement  that  its  author  was  "  well  read 
and  extremely  intelligent."  In  truth,  Mr.  Chase  was  not 
by  any  means  the  only  eminent  man  at  the  Capital  who 
mistook  Lincoln's  measure.  Disparagement  of  the  Presi- 
dent was,  at  first,  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception.  But 
as  he  coped  with  the  problems  of  the  war,  one  after 
another,  sagacious  men  caught  glimpses  of  the  power  that 
was  bound  up  in  his  quaint,  almost  grotesque  personality, 
and  revised  their  estimates  to  somewhat  like  proper  pro- 
portions. Not  so,  however,  with  Chase.  He  never  even 
approached  to  justice  in  a  conception  of  Lincoln,  or,  if 
he  did,  there  is  no  evidence  of  it  among  his  voluminous 
diaries  and  letters.  When  he  committed  to  one  of  his 
journals,  after  their  official  connection  had  ceased,  the 
admission,  "  I  feel  that  I  do  not  know  him,"  Chase  made 
his  truest  comment  on  Abraham  Lincoln. 

The  President  and  his  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  were, 
as  far  as  their  personal  relations  went,  at  no  time  heartily 
in  sympathy  with  each  other.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  one 
rarely  finds  two  public  men  working  together  so  earnestly 
for  the  triumph  of  the  same  principles  who  are,  at  once,  so 
essentially  dissimilar  in  social  attributes  as  they  happened 
to  be.  Lincoln's  ways  —  unconventional  in  the  extreme  — 
grated  upon  the  sensibilities  of  the  dignified  Chase.  To 
the  Secretary's  fondness  for  forms,  pride  of  intellect, 
distaste  for  humor,  and  serious,  almost  ascetic  devotion 
to  his  tasks,  must  be  ascribed,  in  a  degree  at  least,  the 
absence  of  cordiality  between  him  and  a  President  who 
made  no  secret  of  his  ignorance,  troubled  himself  not  a 
whit  about  precedents,  and  was  reminded,  on  all  conceiv- 


AN   INDISPENSABLE   MAN         185 

able  occasions,  of  stories  hardly  constructed  according  to 
classic  models.  Not  the  least  of  Lincoln's  offences  against 
the  Chesterfield  of  his  cabinet  was  the  ill-concealed 
amusement  with  which  he  regarded  that  gentleman's  dis- 
pleasure at  his  levity.  The  President's  bump  of  reverence 
appears  to  have  been  so  exceedingly  flat  that  the  frowns 
of  an  important  personage,  however  great,  failed  to  abash 
him.  Mr.  Chase  once  told,  with  evident  disgust,  how  an 
old-time  crony  of  Lincoln  in  the  Thirtieth  Congress  was 
permitted  to  interrupt  a  meeting  of  the  cabinet.  That 
body  was  in  session  one  day,  when  the  doorkeeper  an- 
nounced that  Orlando  Kellogg  was  without  and  wished 
to  tell  the  President  the  story  of  the  stuttering  justice. 
Mr.  Lincoln  ordered  the  visitor  to  be  ushered  in  imme- 
diately. Greeting  Kellogg  at  the  threshold  with  a  warm 
grasp  of  the  hand,  the  President  said,  as  he  turned  to  his 
cabinet : — 

"  Gentlemen,  this  is  my  old  friend,  Orlando  Kellogg, 
and  he  wants  to  tell  us  the  story  of  the  stuttering  justice. 
Let  us  lay  all  business  aside,  for  it  is  a  good  story." 

So  statesmen,  as  well  as  affairs  of  state,  waited  while 
the  humorous  Kellogg  spun  his  yarn  and  Lincoln  had 
his  laugh.35  Another  cabinet  meeting,  perhaps  the  most 
momentous  in  the  history  of  the  administration,  was  dis- 
figured, according  to  Mr.  Chase's  diary,  by  similar  merri- 
ment. The  President  had  called  his  advisers  together  in 
order  to  lay  before  them  his  draft  of  the  first  Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation.  But  before  proceeding  to  this  weighty 
matter,  he  mentioned  that  Artemus  Ward  had  sent  him 
his  new  book,  and  that  he  desired  to  read  to  them  a  chap- 
ter which  he  had  found  to  be  especially  funny.  Where- 
upon Mr.  Lincoln  regaled  his  assembled  ministers  with  the 
High-Handed  Outrage  at  Utica.  It  was  read  with  effect, 
for  Mr.  Chase  reports  that  his  colleagues,  as  well  as  the 
President,  "seemed  to  enjoy  it  very  much."  Our  diarist 
excepts  the  saturnine  Stanton,  but  says  nothing  about  his 
own  disrelish  of  the  performance.  From  another  source, 


1 86      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

however,  we  learn  of  disapproval  so  plainly  stamped  upon 
Chase's  countenance  that  Lincoln,  eyeing  the  solemn- 
faced  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  as  he  read,  laughed  more 
heartily  than  ever.  In  fact,  the  gentleman's  distress 
became  in  itself  an  object  of  boisterous  hilarity,  "and 
Lincoln,"  we  are  told,  "  seldom  lost  an  opportunity  to 
entertain  himself  and  others  in  this  direction." x  Mr. 
Chase  naturally  felt  aggrieved  on  such  occasions.  They 
hardly  served  to  place  him  at  his  ease  with  the  President, 
or  to  render  more  agreeable  to  either  an  intercourse  that, 
at  its  best,  never  reached  far  beyond  the  limits  of  official 
requirements. 

In  strong  contrast  to  the  distant  relations  between 
Lincoln  and  Chase  was  the  cordial  good-fellowship  which 
the  President  evinced  toward  Seward.  The  Secretary  of 
State  appears  to  have  been  especially  congenial  to  his 
chief.  For  Mr.  Lincoln,  of  all  men,  could  appreciate  a 
cabinet  minister  who,  whatever  may  have  been  his  fail- 
ings, submitted  loyally,  in  the  main,  to  superior  authority, 
fomented  no  quarrels,  and  adapted  a  cheery,  resourceful 
disposition,  with  rare  felicity,  to  the  President's  moods. 
Seward's  influence  with  Lincoln  was  notably  greater  than 
that  of  Chase  —  greater,  in  fact,  than  that  of  any  of  his 
colleagues ;  but  not  nearly  so  great,  be  it  said,  as  was  at 
the  time  generally  believed.  Great  or  small,  however,  the 
prestige  thus  enjoyed  by  the  Secretary  of  State  became 
particularly  galling  to  the  man  in  the  Treasury.  From 
their  earliest  days  in  the  Senate,  these  two  leaders,  not- 
withstanding their  common  dislike  of  slavery  and  their 
previous  cooperation  on  fugitive  slave  cases,  had  been,  in 
a  sense,  opposed  to  each  other.  They  had  joined  hands, 
it  is  true,  in  the  parliamentary  struggle  against  southern 
domination  ;  but  the  Democratic  tendencies  of  the  one, 
and  the  Whig  partisanship  of  the  other,  had  stood  in  the 
way  of  a  friendship  that,  even  under  more  favorable  con- 
ditions, would  have  been  practically  impossible  to  men  of 
such  conflicting  personalities.  They  had  been  associated 


AN   INDISPENSABLE   MAN         187 

together  in  the  Upper  House  for  several  months,  when 
Chase  wrote :  — 

"  I  don't  know  what  Seward  will  do.  I  have  never  been 
able  to  establish  much  sympathy  between  us.  He  is  too 
much  of  a  politician  for  me." 37 

And  within  a  few  weeks,  following,  the  Senator  from 
Ohio  complained  to  his  New  York  colleague  of  the  abuse, 
"  without  any  stint,"  to  which  he  had  been  subjected  by 
the  latter's  friends.  Antagonisms  aroused  at  about  that 
period  were  not  allayed,  even  after  Chase  and  Seward 
had  sunk  their  political  differences,  for  a  time,  in  the  for- 
mation of  the  new  Republican  Party.  They  became,  as 
we  have  seen,  rivals  for  the  presidential  nomination  of 
1860 ;  and  when  that  prize,  as  well  as  the  election,  went 
to  Lincoln,  they  were  again  pitted  against  each  other  in 
a  race  for  the  ascendancy  over  a  seemingly  weak  Execu- 
tive. How  he  pressed  them  both  into  his  cabinet,  despite 
powerful  opposition  to  such  an  association,  has  also  been 
told.  We  need  only  add,  for  a  clear  comprehension  of 
what  ensued,  that  there,  Chase,  the  champion  of  the  radi- 
cal anti-slavery  men  on  the  one  extreme,  and  Seward,  the 
representative  of  the  conservative  element  in  the  party  on 
the  other,  were  at  variance  more  than  ever. 

In  their  official  intercourse,  it  is  true,  these  two  min- 
isters maintained  a  proper  decorum.  They  even  cooper- 
ated, now  and  then,  amicably  together ;  but  in  private, 
the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  pursued  his  more  favored 
colleague  with  criticisms,  no  less  censorious  than  those  he 
so  freely  visited  on  the  President.  To  such  a  degree  did 
Chase  carry  this  faultfinding,  that  he  could  not  even  with- 
hold a  comparatively  mild  expression  of  it  from  Seward's 
partner  and  intimate  friend,  Thurlow  Weed.  "I  told 
him,"  records  Mr.  Chase  in  his  diary  for  September  15, 
1862,  "  I  did  not  doubt  Mr.  Seward's  fidelity  to  his  ideas 
of  progress,  amelioration,  and  freedom  ;  but  that  I  thought 
he  adhered  too  tenaciously  to  men  who  proved  themselves 
unworthy  and  dangerous,  such  as  McClellan ;  that  he 


1 88       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

resisted  too  persistently  decided  measures ;  that  his  influ- 
ence encouraged  the  irresolution  and  inaction  of  the  Presi- 
dent in  respect  to  men  and  measures,  although  personally 
he  was  as  decided  as  anybody  in  favor  of  vigorous  prose- 
cution of  the  war,  and  as  active  as  anybody  in  concert- 
ing plans  of  action  against  the  rebels."  ffl  These  charges, 
with  others  equally  telling,  constituted  the  basis  of  a 
widespread  hostility  to  the  Secretary  of  State ;  for  Chase's 
blows  against  that  officer,  from  within  the  cabinet,  had 
evoked  more  than  an  echo  outside.  Indeed,  almost  every 
important  occurrence  appears  to  have  multiplied  Seward's 
enemies.  Assuming  him  to  be  the  controlling  factor  of 
the  administration,  people  held  him  responsible  —  how 
mistakenly  has  been  shown  elsewhere  —  for  whatever  dis- 
pleased them  in  its  policy.  The  government's  unpopular 
measures,  no  less  than  its  errors  and  mishaps,  its  disasters 
in  the  field  and  reverses  at  the  polls,  were  laid  chiefly  at 
his  door.  So  strong,  in  fact,  ran  the  current  of  condem- 
nation, through  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1862,  that 
it  bade  fair  to  sweep  him  out  of  the  cabinet.  Toward 
this  end  the  anti-slavery  or  Chase  wing  of  the  Republican 
Party,  encouraged,  if  not  actually  inspired,  by  the  Secre- 
tary of  the  Treasury,  especially  labored.  These  Radicals 
were  ii'ritated  out  of  all  patience  by  the  slow-paced  con- 
servatism which  held  the  preservation  of  the  Union  above 
the  abolition  of  slavery ;  yet  they  might  have  taken  pains 
to  look  higher  than  the  State  Department  for  the  source 
of  their  disappointment,  had  not  Mr.  Seward  so  unre- 
servedly identified  himself  with  the  President's  policy 
that  it  was  generally  ascribed  to  him.  Some  of  the  Secre- 
tary's utterances,  moreover,  gave  grave  offence  to  the  anti- 
slavery  leaders.  They  determined  that  nothing  short  of 
his  removal  from  the  cabinet  would  salve  their  wounded 
dignity,  and,  at  the  same  time,  save  their  cause,  by  afford- 
ing Chase  the  opportunity  of  succeeding  to  the  influence 
over  Lincoln  which  Seward  was  supposed  to  be  exerting. 
Accordingly,  one  evening  shortly  after  the  third  ses- 


sion  of  the  Thirty-seventh  Congress  had  begun,  a  secret 
caucus  of  Republican  Senators,  convened  for  the  purpose, 
adopted  by  a  small  majority  a  resolution  demanding  that 
the  President  dismiss  Mr.  Sewavd.  Upon  second  thought, 
with  a  view,  perhaps,  of  securing  a  larger  vote,  or  of 
rendering  less  offensive  this  unprecedented  intrusion  on 
Executive  authority,  a  substitute  requesting  the  recon- 
struction of  the  cabinet  was  proposed,  and  almost  unani- 
mously carried.  In  fact,  what  had  been  a  considerable 
minority  dwindled  to  one  dissenting  voice  —  that  of  Pres- 
ton King,  Senator  from  New  York.  He  hurried  from  the 
meeting  to  inform  Seward,  who  as  promptly,  with  char- 
acteristic tact,  sent  the  President  his  resignation. 

"  What  does  this  mean  ?  "  asked  Mr.  Lincoln  in  pained 
surprise,  as  he  read  the  note ;  and  Senator  King,  enter- 
ing at  the  moment,  answered  the  question.  It  must  have 
seemed  to  the  sorely  tried  President  as  if  his  supporters 
vied  with  his  opponents  to  complicate  his  difficulties.  He 
called  upon  Seward  later  in  the  evening  to  talk  the  matter 
over,  and  in  the  course  of  the  discussion  the  Secretary 
remarked  how  relieved  he  would  feel  to  be  freed  from 
official  cares.  "Ah  yes,  Governor,"  was  the  rejoinder, 
"  that  will  do  very  well  for  you  ;  but  I  am  like  the  starling 
in  Sterne's  story,  *  I  can't  get  out.' " M  And  he  deter- 
mined that  Seward  should  not  "get  out"  either.  On  the 
following  morning  a  formidable  committee  of  nine  —  Sen- 
ators Collamer,  Sumner,  Fessenden,  Wade,  Trumbull, 
Grimes,  Harris,  Howard,  and  Pomeroy  —  waited  upon  the 
President  with  the  resolutions  of  the  caucus.  In  the  con- 
ference that  ensued,  the  Secretary  of  State  was  denounced 
by  most  of  the  delegation  as  the  evil  genius  of  the  gov- 
ernment, and  Mr.  Lincoln  was  urged  to  have  done  with 
him.  "  While  they  seemed  to  believe  in  my  honesty,"  said 
the  President,  describing  the  interview  to  the  cabinet 
after  his  homely  fashion,  "they  also  appeared  to  think 
that  when  I  had  in  me  any  good  purpose  or  intention 
Seward  contrived  to  suck  it  out  of  me  unperceived."40 


1 90       LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF   MEN 

Having  given  the  Senators  no  encouragement  beyond 
an  invitation  to  return  in  the  evening,  Mr.  Lincoln  sum- 
moned his  advisers,  narrated  what  had  happened,  and 
made  a  similar  appointment  svith  them.  The  situation 
was  critical.  To  antagonize  the  senatorial  leaders  of  his 
party  in  the  darkest  days  of  the  war  by  refusing  to  make 
the  change  they  desired,  might  deprive  the  President  of 
cooperation  that  was  vital  to  the  success  of  his  admin- 
istration. To  comply  with  their  request,  on  the  other 
hand,  would  cost  him  not  only  the  services  of  a  valued 
minister,  but  the  support  of  that  minister's  followers  as 
well.  In  either  event,  to  use  a  Liucolnian  phrase,  "  the 
thing  would  all  have  slumped  over  one  way."  The  dis- 
missal of  Seward,  under  the  circumstances,  would  involve, 
moreover,  a  shameful  surrender  to  Chase,  and  what  was 
of  greater  importance  than  all  else,  a  surrender  of  Ex- 
ecutive power  and  prerogative  at  the  summons  of  a  legis- 
lative cabal,  acting  without  even  the  semblance  of  consti- 
tutional authority.  Here  was  a  supreme  test  of  Lincoln's 
mastership.  In  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  he  could  seek 
no  counsel  among  his  customary  advisers.  The  crisis  had 
to  be  met,  at  least  as  far  as  tactics  went,  single-handed  ; 
and  that  somehow  reminds  us  again  of  Lincoln's  early 
da}rs.  It  is  a  far  cry  from  the  White  House  back  to 
Clary's  Grove ;  yet,  as  the  representatives  of  the  caucus 
file  into  the  Executive  Mansion  for  their  evening  confer- 
ence, we  recall  a  scene  in  the  backwoods  settlement,  —  a 
melee  of  men,  an  angry  onset,  and  a  cool,  muscular  young 
fellow  who  stands  braced  against  a  wall  to  receive  their 
combined  attack. 

When  the  Senators  entered  the  President's  room,  they 
were  taken  aback  at  finding  all  the  members  of  the  cab- 
inet, except  Mr.  Seward,  seated  around  their  chief ;  and 
the  cabinet,  it  must  be  said,  were  as  greatly  surprised 
over  the  meeting  as  the  committee.  Thus  confronted,  the 
two  parties,  with  Lincoln  acting  as  a  sort  of  moderator, 
entered  upon  a  full  and  free  discussion.  The  Senators 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN         191 

made  a  brisk  attack  upon  the  administration,  and  upon 
the  Secretary  of  State,  in  particular ;  the  President's 
counselors  defended  themselves,  as  well  as  their  absent 
associate,  with  spirit.  The  attitude  of  the  Secretaries  was 
indicated  by  Mr.  Stanton.  "  This  cabinet,  gentlemen," 
said  he,  "  is  like  yonder  window.  Suppose  you  allowed 
it  to  be  understood  that  passers-by  might  knock  out  one 
pane  of  glass,  —  just  one  at  a  time,  —  how  long  do  you 
think  any  panes  would  be  left  in  it?"41  Seward's  cause 
had  become,  perforce,  that  of  his  colleagues.  They  were 
obliged,  by  the  logic  of  events,  to  stand  as  a  unit  between 
him  and  his  assailants.  Even  Chase,  brought  to  bay,  was 
forced  into  turning,  after  a  fashion,  against  the  men  who 
had  come  to  strengthen  his  position.  He  found  himself 
in  a  predicament.  To  agree  with  the  Senators,  in  their 
attacks  upon  Seward  or  the  administration,  though  he  had 
made  the  identical  criticisms  to  them  and  to  others,  was, 
in  that  presence,  obviously  out  of  the  question.  To  take 
ground  effectively  against  these  charges,  without  stultify- 
ing himself,  was,  under  existing  conditions,  equally  impos- 
sible. So  he  joined  with  his  fellow  ministers,  as  best  he 
could,  protesting  angrily,  the  while,  against  his  dilemma, 
and  expressing  regret  that  he  had  come.  The  rest  of  the 
meeting,  however,  talked  itself  frankly  into  a  better  under- 
standing. Before  it  was  dissolved,  late  in  the  night,  Lin- 
coln asked  the  committee :  — 

"Do  you  gentlemen  still  think  Seward  ought  to  be 
excused?" 

On  a  formal  vote,  but  four  of  the  eight  Senators  present 
—  Wade  was  absent  —  answered,  "Yes."42  As  the  vis- 
itors were  leaving,  one  of  them,  unable  to  conceal  his 
chagrin  at  Chase's  apparent  double-dealing,  said  privately 
to  the  President,  yet  with  considerable  feeling,  that  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury  had  spoken  in  a  different  tone 
elsewhere.43  This  Lincoln  knew  well  enough.  He  also 
knew  what  was  perhaps  beginning  to  dawn  on  the  minds 
of  the  astute  statesmen  who  had  participated  in  this 


1 92       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

remarkable  controversy  —  his  trap  had  been  sprung,  and 
Chase  was  fairly  caught. 

Overnight  reflection  revealed  to  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  how  untenable  his  position  had  become.  His 
own  withdrawal  from  the  cabinet  was  apparently  the  sole 
retreat  open  to  his  ruffled  dignity.  So,  the  next  morning, 
when  the  President  and  some  of  his  advisers  met  for 
further  consultation,  Mr.  Chase  offered  his  resignation. 
He  held  the  paper  in  his  hand,  but  made  no  motion  to 
deliver  it.  Whereupon  Mr.  Lincoln,  we  are  told,  "stepped 
forward  and  took  it  with  an  alacrity  that  surprised  and, 
it  must  be  said,  disappointed  Mr.  Chase." 44  Then  the 
meeting  was  at  once  dismissed.  There  was  no  further 
need  of  discussion.  From  that  moment  the  President 
saw  his  way  clear  before  him.  With  the  resignations  of 
the  rival  leaders  in  his. hands,  he  was  master  of  the  situ- 
ation. He  might  retain  them  both,  by  treating  their  with- 
drawal as  a  joint  affair,  and  making  the  readmission  of 
the  one  dependent  upon  that  of  the  other ;  or,  if  the  cab- 
inet was  to  be  reconstructed  after  all,  he  would  be  free, 
with  both  of  them  out,  to  make  such  appointments  as 
should  still  preserve  the  balance  between  their  respective 
factions.  "  Yes,  Judge,"  said  Lincoln  to  Senator  Harris, 
who  came  upon  him  as  he  stood  with  Chase's  letter  in 
his  grasp,  "  I  can  ride  on  now,  I  've  got  a  pumpkin  in 
each  end  of  my  bag."  ^  Having  delivered  himself  of  this 
bucolic  figure,  so  nicely  expressive  of  the  turn  that  affairs 
had  taken,  the  President  sent  each  of  the  Secretaries  a 
note,  addressed  to  them  jointly,  declining  to  accept  their 
resignations.  "  After  most  anxious  consideration,"  he 
wrote,  "  my  deliberate  judgment  is  that  the  public  inter 
est  does  not  admit  of  it.  I  therefore  have  to  request  that 
you  will  resume  the  duties  of  your  departments  respec- 
tively." *  Seward,  promptly  taking  his  cue,  answered  the 
following  morning :  — 

"  I  have  cheerfully  resumed  the  functions  of  this  depart- 
ment in  obedience  to  your  command." 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN         193 

Chase's  lines  were  not  so  simple.  Realizing  that  he  had 
blundered  into  a  false  exit,  when  last  on  the  scene,  he 
wrote  :  — 

"  Will  you  allow  me  to  say  that  something  you  said  or 
looked,  when  I  handed  you  my  resignation  this  morning, 
made  on  my  mind  the  impression  that  having  received 
the  resignations  both  of  Governor  Seward  and  myself,  you 
could  relieve  yourself  from  trouble  by  declining  to  accept 
either,  and  that  this  feeling  was  one  of  gratification.  .  .  . 
I  could  not,  if  I  would,  conceal  from  myself  that  recent 
events  have  too  rudely  jostled  the  unity  of  your  cabinet, 
and  disclosed  an  opinion  too  deeply  seated,  and  too  gen- 
erally received  in  Congress  and  in  the  country,  to  be 
safely  disregarded,  that  the  concord  in  judgment  and 
action,  essential  to  successful  administration,  does  not 
prevail  among  its  members.  ...  A  resignation  is  a  grave 
act  —  never  performed  by  a  right-minded  man  without 
forethought  or  with  reserve.  I  tendered  mine  from  a 
sense  of  duty  to  the  country,  to  you,  and  to  myself ;  and 
I  tendered  it  to  be  accepted.  So  did,  as  you  have  been 
fully  assured,  Mr.  Seward  tender  his.  I  trust,  therefore, 
that  you  will  regard  yourself  as  completely  relieved  from 
all  personal  considerations.  It  is  my  honest  conviction 
that  we  can  both  better  serve  you  and  the  country  at  this 
time  as  private  citizens  than  in  your  cabinet."  47 

Before  the  letter  could  be  despatched,  word  came  to 
the  writer  from  Seward  that  he  had  returned  to  his  post. 
This  completely  disarmed  Chase.  He  would  have  been 
pleased  at  the  removal  of  the  Secretary  of  State,  or  even 
at  the  retirement  of  Seward  and  himself;  but  that  his 
rival  should  be  restored  to  power,  while  he  returned  to 
private  life,  was  hardly  to  his  taste.  After  another  day 
of  perplexity,  Chase  wrote  to  the  President,  also  with- 
drawing his  resignation.  He  enclosed  the  unsent  letter, 
however,  and  accompanied  his  reluctant  surrender  with 
reservations  that  boded  no  good  to  the  future  peace  of  the 
administration.  Here  the  episode  closed,  but  it  presents  a 


i94       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

dramatic  coincidence  that  should  not  be  overlooked.  The 
same  sagacity,  adroitness,  and  mastery  over  men  with 
which  Lincoln  had  covered  Chase's  entrance  into  the  cab- 
inet, under  a  storm  of  opposition  from  Seward's  friends, 
had  been  as  successfully  employed  two  years  later  to  pro- 
tect Seward,  in  his  turn,  against  the  assaults  of  Chase's 
followers,  reenforced  though  they  were  by  a  senatorial 
caucus  of  exceptional  influence.  Both  the  great  ones  had 
thus  found  shelter  from  each  other,  under  the  Presi- 
dent's ample  shield.  Yet  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury, 
strange  to  say,  still  failed  to  discern  what  had  become  so 
evident  to  his  colleague  of  the  State  Department,  —  that 
the  man  who  could  do  such  things  was  their  superior  in 
fact,  no  less  than  in  station. 

Ere  the  winter  had  elapsed,  Mr.  Chase  again  measured 
his  strength  against  that  of  the  President.  The  occasion 
arose  out  of  the  rejection,  by  the  Senate,  of  a  treasury 
nomination.  Mark  Howard,  selected  by  the  head  of  the 
department  to  be  a  Collector  of  Internal  Revenue  for  the 
First  District  of  Connecticut,  had,  through  the  opposition 
of  Senator  Dixon  from  that  State,  failed  of  confirmation. 
In  somewhat  of  a  rage,  Mr.  Chase  urged  Mr.  Lincoln  to 
renominate  his  candidate,  —  who,  by  the  way,  was  giving 
satisfaction  under  a  temporary  appointment,  —  or  at  least, 
to  await  the  Secretary's  selection  of  an  equally  suitable 
person ;  but  under  no  circumstances  to  appoint  any  one 
recommended  by  the  offending  Senator.  That  gentleman, 
be  it  said,  had  acted  entirely  within  his  rights  in  securing 
Howard's  rejection ;  and  Mr.  Lincoln  had  no  intention 
of  disciplining  him  for  so  doing.  Nor  was  the  President 
prepared,  however  much  he  may  have  agreed  with  his 
Secretary  in  the  general  theory  of  appointments,  to  dis- 
regard the  wishes  of  influential  legislators.  He  wrote  to 
Mr.  Chase  :  — 

"  After  much  reflection,  and  with  a  good  deal  of  pain 
that  it  is  adverse  to  your  wish,  I  have  concluded  that  it 
is  not  best  to  renominate  Mr.  Howard  for  Collector  of 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN         195 

Internal  Revenue,  at  Hartford,  Connecticut.  Senator 
Dixon,  residing  at  Hartford,  and  Mr.  Loomis,  Represent- 
ative of  the  district,  join  in  recommending  Edward  Good- 
man for  the  place ;  and,  so  far,  no  one  has  presented  a 
different  name.  I  will  thank  you,  therefore,  to  send  me 
a  nomination,  at  once,  for  Mr.  Goodman."  ** 

Upon  receipt  of  the  letter,  Secretary  Chase  penned  this 
curt  reply :  — 

"  Finding  myself  unable  to  approve  the  manner  in 
which  selections  for  appointment  to  important  trusts  in 
this  department  have  been  recently  made,  and  being 
unwilling  to  remain  responsible  for  its  administration, 
under  existing  circumstances,  I  respectfully  resign  the 
office  of  Secretary  of  the  Treasury."  *9 

But  before  the  message  was  sent,  Senator  Dixon  called 
at  the  Treasury  Department.  He  was  in  so  conciliatory  a 
mood  that  a  compromise  was  easily  effected.  Both  parties 
agreed  to  submit  the  matter  at  issue  to  the  President  for 
his  further  consideration,  with  the  understanding  that 
Chase  should  not  insist  on  the  renomination  of  Howard, 
while  Dixon  and  Loomis  should  claim  no  recognition  in 
the  making  of  a  substitute  appointment.50  The  Secretary, 
laying  his  resignation  aside,  accordingly  wrote  Mr.  Lin- 
coln the  purport  of  the  interview,  instead.  So  nettled  was 
he,  however,  at  the  President's  willingness  to  act  counter 
to  his  wishes  that  he  could  not  forbear,  though  the  occa- 
sion had  passed,  to  close  the  letter  with  this  ultimatum :  — 

"My  only  object  —  and  I  think  you  so  understand  it 
—  is  to  secure  fit  men  for  responsible  places,  without 
admitting  the  rights  of  Senators  or  Representatives  to 
control  appointments,  for  which  the  President  and  the 
Secretary,  as  his  presumed  adviser,  must  be  responsible. 
Unless  this  principle  can  be  practically  established,  I  feel 
that  I  cannot  be  useful  to  you  or  the  country  in  my  pre- 
sent position."  51 

The  covert  threat  of  resignation  was  apparently  un- 
heeded by  Mr.  Lincoln.  It  was  enough  for  him  that  the 


196       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

quarrel,  in  which  he  had  no  personal  interest,  had  been 
settled,  without  alienating  either  the  Secretary  or  the 
Senator.  As  to  the  rest,  a  favorite  maxim  guided  his 
course  —  he  never  crossed  Fox  River  until  he  reached 
there. 

It  might  seemingly  have  been  better  for  all  concerned 
had  the  President  departed,  in  this  instance,  from  his  prac- 
tice, sufficiently  to  arrive  at  an  understanding  with  Mr. 
Chase  on  the  issue  thus  raised.  Yet  a  glance  reveals  how 
impracticable  such  a  step  would  have  been.  The  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury  took  the  ground,  not  without  some  show 
of  justice,  that,  as  he  was  held  responsible  for  so  impor- 
tant a  department,  all  appointments  to  its  numerous  places 
of  trust,  no  less  than  removals  therefrom,  should  be  under 
his  sole  control.  He  insisted,  in  short,  that  his  substan- 
tially unrestricted  sway  over  financial  matters  ought  to 
include  the  rich  patronage  of  the  office,  as  well.  This 
claim  Mr.  Lincoln  allowed  to  an  unusual  degree.  Indeed, 
so  often  did  he  defer  to  Mr.  Chase's  desires  that  the  Sec- 
retary became  incapable  of  recognizing  a  reasonable  ex- 
ception. Consequently  when,  on  rare  occasions,  personal 
or  political  considerations  moved  the  President  to  insist 
on  nominations  or  dismissals  contrary  to  the  minister's 
wishes,  that  gentleman's  unruly  temper  made  things  as 
disagreeable  as  circumstances  allowed.  At  such  times 
Lincoln  sought  to  attain  his  ends  with  the  least  possible 
friction.  Badgered  by  office-seekers  as  no  American  Ex- 
ecutive had  been  before  him ;  holding  the  balance  between 
conflicting  sections  of  a  discordant  party,  largely  by  means 
of  his  appointments,  and  dependent  upon  the  good-will  of 
every  element  in  that  party,  as  only  a  President  can  be 
during  a  great  civil  war,  he  would  not  —  in  fact,  could 
not  —  surrender  to  Chase  the  entire  patronage  of  the 
Treasury,  which,  it  may  be  added,  was  then  more  exten- 
sive, perhaps,  than  that  of  all  the  other  civil  departments 
combined.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Lincoln,  both  on 
account  of  this  Secretary's  value  personally,  and  because 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN         197 

of  the  powerful  wing  that  he  represented,  wished  to  avoid 
a  rupture.  So  the  man  iti  the  Treasury,  usually,  had  his 
way  with  the  offices ;  the  man  in  the  White  House,  now 
and  then,  had  his.  In  either  event,  the  question  of  abso- 
lute control  over  appointments  lay  flickering  between 
them,  ready,  at  the  slightest  poke  among  the  smouldering 
embers,  to  leap  into  flame  again. 

The  Howard  incident  had  hardly  closed,  when  a  new 
squabble  about  patronage  arose.  Deeming  it  necessary  to 
make  sweeping  changes  in  his  department  at  San  Fran- 
cisco, Mr.  Chase  invited  the  three  California  Congress- 
men, Messrs.  Low,  Sargent,  and  Phelps,  to  his  office,  one 
evening,  and  informed  them  of  the  fact.  He  declared 
his  determination  to  remove  the  leading  treasury  officers 
and  to  supply  their  places  with  men  whose  names  he 
announced.  His  visitors,  taken  by  surprise  and  believing 
his  purpose  to  be  irrevocable,  offered  no  objections;  but, 
as  they  left  the  building,  they  gave  free  vent  to  their 
anger.  A  few  days  thereafter,  these  Representatives, 
Congress  having  adjourned,  left  for  home  by  way  of  New 
York.  Upon  their  arrival  at  the  metropolis,  Mr.  Phelps 
took  passage  for  San  Francisco,  while  his  colleagues 
tarried  in  the  city.  Before  they  were  ready  to  sail,  a  de- 
spatch from  Mr.  Lincoln  recalled  them  to  Washington. 
He  had  just  learned,  to  his  surprise  and  vexation,  how 
summarily  Mr.  Chase  was  about  to  fill  the  most  impor- 
tant Federal  offices  on  the  Pacific  coast.  For  not  only 
had  the  members  of  Congress  from  that  section,  as  we 
have  seen,  been  practically  ignored  by  a  mere  pretence  at 
consultation,  but  the  President,  himself,  had  also  been 
kept  in  the  dark.  Upon  the  return  of  Messrs.  Low  and 
Sargent,  the  Secretary's  plans  were  speedily  revised.  It 
was  too  late,  in  the  absence  of  Mr.  Phelps,  to  consider 
the  appointments  as  Mr.  Lincoln  had  intended ;  but  he 
broke  Chase's  carefully  constructed  slate,  and  that  stiff- 
necked  minister's  feelings,  as  the  President  afterwards 
said,  were  "  exceedingly  hurt "  in  the  process. 


198       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

Shortly  after  the  California  affair,  another  clash  of 
authority  arose  between  Lincoln  and  Chase,  over  a  trea- 
sury office  on  the  Pacific  coast.  Victor  Smith,  a  friend  of 
the  Secretary,  had,  at  his  request,  been  made  Collector  of 
Customs  in  the  Puget  Sound  District.  The  appointee  was 
eccentric,  and  deft,  to  a  notable  degree,  in  the  gentle  art 
of  making  enemies.  So  wide-spread  grew  his  unpopularity 
that  Congressmen,  Federal  officers,  and  private  citizens  of 
influence  united  in  demanding  his  removal.  Not  content 
with  the  letters  and  petitions  which  they  had  poured  into 
Washington,  the  people,  deeply  aroused,  sent  a  deputation 
all  the  way  from  Puget  Sound  —  a  formidable  journey 
in  1863  —  with  charges  against  Smith.  The  accusations 
were  referred  by  the  President,  for  investigation,  to  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  who,  throughout  the  clamor, 
had  stood  stoutly  by  his  friend.  But  before  Mr.  Chase 
had  time  for  a  report,  he  was  called  away  from  the  Capital, 
on  business.  During  his  somewhat  protracted  absence,  the 
outcry  from  the  scene  of  the  trouble  became  well-nigh 
intolerable ;  and  Mr.  Lincoln  was  forced  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  public  interests  required  Smith's  immedi- 
ate dismissal.  Steps  in  this  direction  had  already  been 
taken,  when  Mr.  Chase  returned.  He  found  that  a  note 
had  been  received  at  the  department,  from  the  President, 
ordering  a  Collector's  commission  for  Henry  Clay  Wilson, 
as  Smith's  successor.  The  man  so  appointed,  however,  had 
recently  died.  As  soon  as  Mr.  Lincoln  discovered  the 
fact,  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Chase,  recalling  the  order  and 
directing  a  commission  to  be  made  out  for  Frederick  A. 

o 

Wilson,  instead.    Accompanying  the  first  formal  message 
was  a  private  letter  from  the  President,  which  read  :  — 

"  I  address  this  to  you  personally  rather  than  officially, 
because  of  the  nature  of  the  case.  My  mind  is  made  up 
to  remove  Victor  Smith  as  Collector  of  the  Customs  at  the 
Puget  Sound  District.  Yet  in  doing  this  I  do  not  decide 
that  the  charges  against  him  are  true.  I  only  decide  that 
the  degree  of  dissatisfaction  with  him  there  is  too  great 


AN   INDISPENSABLE   MAN         199 

for  him  to  be  retained.  But  I  believe  he  is  your  personal 
acquaintance  and  friend,  and  if  you  desire  it  I  will  try  to 
find  some  other  place  for  him."52 

Mr.  Chase  felt  that  both  he  and  his  Collector  had  been 
grievously  wronged.  "  I  had  not  thought  it  possible,"  he 
replied,  "  that  you  would  remove  an  officer  of  my  depart- 
ment without  awaiting  the  result,  although  somewhat 
delayed,  of  an  investigation,  directed  by  yourself;  and 
appoint  a  successor,  for  whose  action  I  must  be  largely 
responsible,  without  even  consulting  me  on  the  subject." 
He  restated,  at  some  length,  what  he  deemed  to  be  his 
rights  in  such  matters,  and  concluded  with :  — 

"  The  blank  commission  which  you  direct  me  to  send 
you  is  inclosed ;  for  to  obey  your  directions,  so  long  as  I 
shall  hold  office  under  you,  is  my  duty.  It  is  inclosed, 
however,  with  my  most  respectful  protest  against  the 
precedent,  and  with  the  assurance  that  if  you  find  any- 
thing in  my  views  to  which  your  own  sense  of  duty  will 
not  permit  you  to  assent,  I  will  unhesitatingly  relieve  you 
from  all  embarrassment,  so  far  as  I  am  concerned,  by 
tendering  you  my  resignation."  B 

Here  was  a  new  coil  for  the  weary  President  to  unravel. 
Smith  had  to  go,  even  though  he  had  become  "  so  inter- 
twined," to  use  his  own  high-sounding  words,  "  in  the 
fibers  of  the  government"  that  his  removal  from  office 
was  "  an  impossibility."  M  At  the  same  time,  Lincoln  could 
not  afford  to  let  the  little  Collector  carry  the  big  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury  out  with  him.  So  the  President,  order- 
ing his  carriage,  drove  to  Chase's  house.  What  followed 
between  the  two  men  we  will  let  Lincoln  himself  relate, 
as  he  once  did  to  an  acquaintance :  — 

"I  went  directly  up  to  him  with  the  resignation  in 
my  hand,  and,  putting  my  arm  around  his  neck,  said  to 
him,  '  Chase,  here  is  a  paper  with  which  I  wish  to  have 
nothing  to  do ;  take  it  back  and  be  reasonable.'  I  then 
explained  to  him  what  had  occurred  while  he  was  away. 
I  told  him  that  the  man  whom  I  had  appointed  happened 


200      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

to  have  been  dead  several  weeks ;  that  I  could  n't  replace 
the  person  whom  I  had  removed,  — that  was  impossible, 

—  but  that  I  would  appoint  any  one  else  whom  he  should 
select  for  the  place.55   It  was  difficult  to  bring  him   to 
terms.    I    had  to  plead  with    him  a  long  time,  but   I 
finally  succeeded,  and  heard  nothing  more  of  that  resig- 
nation."56 

A  few  days  thereafter,  Mr.  Chase  found  a  satisfactory 
candidate,  whom  Mr.  Lincoln  promptly  appointed. 

Meanwhile,  a  customs  collectorship  of  more  moment 

—  in  fact,  the  most  important  on  the  list  —  was  hatching 
trouble  between  the  President  and  his  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury.    They  found  in  Hiram  Barney,  Collector  of  the 
Port  of  New  York,  a  veritable  germ  of  irritation.    He  was 
one  of  Chase's  most  valued  supporters.   As  a  political 
lieutenant,  Barney  had,  in  years  gone  by,  won  the  Radical 
leader's  good-will ;  as  a  friend,  he  had  by  his  private  kind- 
nesses laid  that  gentleman,  more  recently,  under  heavy  and 
somewhat  peculiar  obligations.    Mr.  Chase  was  therefore 
highly  gratified  when,  in  the  spring  of  1861,  the  President, 
who  knew  and  liked  Mr.  Barney,  appointed  him,  largely  if 
not  entirely  of  his  own  accord,  to  the  management  of  the 
New  York  Custom  House.    This  post,  beset  with  difficul- 
ties under  the  best  of  conditions,  was  soon  rendered  par- 
ticularly trying  by  conflicts  between  the  opposing  Repub- 
lican factions.    Conservatives  accused  Barney  of  running 
the  Custom  House  in  the  interests  of  the  anti-slavery 
men  ;  while  Radicals  found  fault  with  him  for  not  using 
his  patronage  more  freely  than  he  did  to  strengthen  the 
Chase  element.   Between  these  two  fires  the  Collector's 
health  became  impaired.    In  the  autumn  of  1863,  he  asked 
to  be  relieved  from  a  thankless  position  ;  but  neither  Lin- 
coln nor  Chase  would  hear  of  his  retirement.    As  the  time, 
however,  for  the  next  presidential  canvass  drew  near,  the 
attacks  upon  him  grew  fiercer  than  ever.    They  presently 
developed  into  charges  of  corruption  and  incompetency, 
which  a  Congressional  Committee  undertook  to  investi- 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN        201 

gate.57  Meanwhile  Mr.  Lincoln  had  come  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  both  Mr.  Barney  and  the  public  service  might 
benefit  if  the  resignation,  rejected  a  few  months  before, 
were  revived  and  accepted.  He  said  so  to  Mr.  Chase,  and 
called  upon  him  for  his  cooperation ;  but  the  Secretary 
answered  with  the  warmth  that  had  become  habitual  on 
such  occasions :  — 

"  I  am  to-day  fifty-six  years  old.  I  have  never  con- 
sciously and  deliberately  injured  one  fellow  man.  It  is 
too  late  for  me  to  begin  by  sacrificing  to  clamor  the  reputa- 
tion of  a  man  whom  I  have  known  for  more  than  twenty 
years,  and  whose  repute  for  honesty  has  been  all  that  time 
unsullied.  I  shall  not  recommend  the  removal  of  Mr. 
Barney,  except  upon  such  show  of  misconduct,  or  incapa- 
city, as  makes  it  my  duty  to  do  so.  In  such  a  case  I  shall 
not  shrink  from  my  duty.  I  pretend  no  indifference  to 
the  consequences,  personal  to  myself,  which  you  refer  to 
as  likely  to  follow  this  avowal  on  my  part.  But  the  ap- 
proval of  my  own  conscience  is  dearer  to  me  than  politi- 
cal position,  and  I  shall  cheerfully  sacrifice  the  latter  to 
preserve  the  former."  M 

Four  weeks  later,  Lincoln,  disturbed  by  the  misbehavior 
of  an  officer  high  in  the  Collector's  favor,  again  suggested 
the  wisdom  of  Barney's  retirement  from  the  Custom 
House.  Assuring  both  the  Secretary  and  the  Collector 
of  his  continued  confidence  in  the  latter,  he  offered  Mr. 
Barney  the  mission  to  Portugal.59  But  the  Collector  de- 
clined to  withdraw  voluntarily,  while  under  fire ;  and  hia 
friend  at  the  head  of  the  department  sustained  him  in  this 
position.  Chase  "was  very  angry,"  said  the  President, 
describing  the  interview  which  followed,  "  and  he  told  me 
that  the  day  that  Mr.  Barney  left  the  New  York  Custom 
House,  with  or  without  his  own  consent,  he,  Chase,  would 
withdraw  from  the  Secretaryship  of  the  Treasury.  Well, 
I  backed  down  again."60  There  the  matter  rested,  pend- 
ing the  investigation.  Before  the  committee  had  concluded 
its  labors,  however,  Mr.  Lincoln  returned  to  the  charge. 


202       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

Nothing,  indeed,  had  been  disclosed  to  Mr.  Barney's  per- 
sonal dishonor ;  yet  the  irregular  and,  in  some  instances, 
corrupt  practices  traced  to  some  of  his  subordinates,  to- 
gether with  a  steadily  growing  dissatisfaction  over  his 
management,  confirmed  the  President's  purpose  to  make 
a  change  in  the  office.  Mr.  Chase  again  protested,  but 
less  vehemently  than  before ;  and  while  the  question  was 
still,  in  a  sense,  unsettled,  came  the  succession  of  events 
that  put  an  end  to  the  jangling  relations  between  Lincoln 
and  his  refractory  minister. 

Mr.  Chase's  persistent  hostility  toward  the  chief  who 
was  entitled  to  his  support  should,  before  we  go  further,  be 
traced  back  to  its  one  overmastering  impulse  —  his  own 
ambition  to  become  President.  Had  all  the  other  causes 
of  irritation  been  removed,  this  aim  would  still  have  left 
him  in  an  attitude  of  uncompromising  antagonism.  In 
fact,  it  alone  accounts  for  whatever  in  the  man's  conduct 
might  otherwise  be  inexplicable. 

"  Such  men  as  he  be  never  at  heart's  ease, 
Whiles  they  behold  a  greater  than  themselves." 

An  aspirant  for  the  nomination  in  1856,  and  again  in 
1860,  Chase  had  entered  Mr.  Lincoln's  cabinet  with  the 
fixed  idea  that  he,  not  the  President,  ought  to  be  the  stand- 
ard-bearer of  their  party  in  1864.  It  is  said  that  a  man 
once  bitten  with  desire  for  our  highest  office  is  never  — 
if  it  remain  ungratified  —  wholly  healed.  This  craving, 
when  thwarted,  appears  to  gnaw  like  the  worm  which 
dieth  not,  and  to  burn  like  the  fire  which  is  not  quenched. 
Chase's  attack  of  "  the  White  House  fever,"  as  Lincoln 
in  speaking  of  him  called  it,  raged  until  1872  —  within  a 
year  or  so  of  his  death ;  but  at  no  time  was  it  so  acute 
«-s  during  these  cabinet  days.  His  course  in  seeking  to 
supplant  Mr.  Lincoln  while  a  member  of  the  President's 
official  household  has  been  severely  commented  on,  and 
not  without  reason.  Granting  his  fitness  for  the  place  to 
which  he  aspired,  as  well  as  the  validity  of  his  claim  to 
the  highest  rewards  within  the  gift  of  his  party,  and  dis- 


AN  INDISPENSABLE  MAN         203 

regarding  all  questions  concerning  his  personal  disloyalty, 
we  cannot  overlook  the  impropriety  which  arose  the  mo- 
ment he  gave  free  range  to  an  ambition,  so  dependent  for 
its  success  on  the  reverses  of  the  very  administration  that 
he  was  in  duty  bound  to  sustain  with  all  his  strength. 
"  A  man  may  be  either  a  Minister  or  an  agitator,"  said 
Lord  Palmerston  concerning  a  restlessly  ambitious  mem- 
ber of  his  cabinet ;  and  even  Chase's  genius,  as  has  been 
seen,  failed  to  carry  him  with  credit  through  the  anom- 
alous situations  that  resulted  from  his  attempt  to  be  both, 
at  the  same  time.  Nor  could  his  ordinarily  well-poised 
sense  of  justice  deter  him  from  the  unfair  criticism  and 
factious  opposition  into  which  he  allowed  himself  to  be 
betrayed  by  his  rivalry  of  the  President.61 

Mr.  Chase  began  his  canvass  for  the  nomination  betimes. 
He  scattered  the  seeds  of  his  discontent  with  Mr.  Lincoln 
broadcast.  Indeed,  the  letters  that  have  supplied  us  with 
instances  of  the  Secretary's  hostility  constituted  but  a 
small  part  of  the  correspondence  by  which  he  sought  at 
once  to  blight  the  President's  prospects,  and  to  bring  his 
own  to  fruition.  He  made  it  a  point  to  cultivate  cordial 
relations  with  generals  and  politicians  who  had,  for  one 
reason  or  another,  become  unfriendly  to  Mr.  Lincoln  ; 
and,  what  is  more  reprehensible  still,  he  did  not  hesitate 
to  fan  the  flames  of  their  resentment.  That  such  conduct 
was  "incompatible"  —  to  use  one  of  Chase's  own  phrases 
—  "  with  perfect  honor  and  good  faith,"  appears  never  to 
have  entered  his  mind.  Nor  did  he  see  the  inconsistencies 
into  which  he  was  carried  by  his  almost  childish  eager- 
ness. Declaring  his  affection  for  the  President,  he  exerted 
himself,  as  far  as  his  dignity  permitted,  to  compass  that 
leader's  political  overthrow  ;  and  affirming  his  indifference 
to  the  highest  office,  he  pushed  his  chances  for  it  through 
every  avenue  not  barred  by  his  own  peculiar  code  of 
public  ethics.  He  even  availed  himself  of  the  prevalent 
prejudice  against  reelecting  a  President ;  for,  since  Jack- 
son occupied  the  White  House,  no  man  had  been  chosen 


204      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

to  a  second  term.  As  early  as  the  autumn  of  1863,  Chase 
wrote  to  his  son-in-law,  ex-Governor  Sprague  :  — 

"  If  I  were  controlled  by  merely  personal  sentiments,  I 
should  prefer  the  reelection  of  Mr.  Lincoln  to  that  of  any 
other  man.  But  I  doubt  the  expediency  of  reflecting  any- 
body, and  I  think  a  man  of  different  qualities  from  those 
the  President  has  will  be  needed  for  the  next  four  years."  m 

The  writer  —  it  is  perhaps  unnecessary  to  add  —  be- 
lieved himself  endowed  with  all  the  gifts  in  which  he 
fancied  the  Executive  to  be  lacking. 

Despite  his  Secretary's  unfavorable  opinion,  Lincoln 
ardently  desired  a  reelection.  Aside  from  his  own  ambi- 
tion, which  alone  was  keen  enough  to  stimulate  him  in 
that  direction,  it  was  clearly  his  duty  to  do  what  with  pro- 
priety he  might  toward  remaining  at  the  head  of  affairs. 
How  long  the  life-and-death  struggle  for  the  Union 
would  last,  or  with  what  result,  no  man  could,  in  1863, 
foresee.  Under  the  most  favorable  conditions,  part,  if  not 
all,  of  another  term  might  be  required  for  bringing  the 
war  to  a  triumphant  close,  and  restoring  the  country  to 
its  former  prosperity.  The  hope  of  seeing  his  efforts  thus 
crowned  had  sustained  the  President's  steps  in  the  thorny 
path  over  which  he  was  even  then  leading  the  nation.  To 
be  deprived  of  his  command  halfway,  with  the  goal  per- 
haps in  sight,  would  have  been  a  disappointment,  indeed. 
He  deemed  himself,  moreover,  better  fitted  than  any  other 
man  —  Mr.  Chase  to  the  contrary,  notwithstanding  —  for 
the  completion  of  what  he  had  begun.  Discussing  the  mat- 
ter with  a  friend,  he  said,  in  one  of  his  favorite  figures : 

"  I  am  only  the  people's  attorney  in  this  great  affair.  I 
am  trying  to  do  the  best  I  can  for  my  client  —  the  coun- 
try. But  if  the  people  desire  to  change  their  attorney,  it 
is  not  for  me  to  resist  or  complain.  Nevertheless,  between 
you  and  me,  I  think  the  change  would  be  impolitic,  who- 
ever might  be  substituted  for  the  present  counsel."  w 

On  another  occasion,  he  expressed  this  opinion  in  the 
oft-quoted  apothegm :  — 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN        205 

"I  don't  believe  it  is  wise  to  swap  horses  while  crossing 
a  stream."  64 

Lincoln's  confidence  in  the  wisdom  of  his  reelection 
was  at  first  not  generally  shared  by  leading  members  of 
his  own  party.  Some,  like  Chase,  thought  him  unfit  for 
the  office.  In  this  "  fellow  of  infinite  jest,"  with  his  easy- 
going moods,  his  seeming  lack  of  executive  talents,  and 
his  apparent  incapacity  to  grasp  the  momentous  problems 
of  the  war,  they  failed  to  discern 

"The  kindly-earnest,  brave,  foreseeing  man" 

that  the  whole  world,  wise  after  the  event,  now  knows  him 
to  have  been.  Others,  playing  politics  with  the  very  life 
of  the  nation  at  stake,  insisted  on  forcing  out  of  the  gatne 
a  President  who,  after  a  masterful  fashion  of  his  own, 
had  brushed  their  hands  aside  in  filling  this  office  or 
adopting  that  policy.  Here,  surely,  was  not  an  encourag- 
ing outlook  for  a  renomination.  "Of  the  more  earnest 
and  thoroughgoing  Republicans  in  both  Houses  of  Con- 
gress," writes  a  member,  "probably  not  one  hi  ten  really 
favored  it."  ^  The  spirit  of  faction,  too,  xvas  bitter,  even 
for  those  overwrought  days.  What  might  be  called  the 
Radical  Anti-Slavery  wing  of  the  party  —  at  least,  certain 
politicians  and  editors  who  believed  themselves  to  repre- 
sent that  wing  —  cried  aloud  against  the  renomination. 
Lincoln's  cautious,  conservative  methods,  particularly  his 
course  in  subordinating  the  slavery  question  to  whatever 
concerned  the  preservation  of  the  Union,  had  aroused 
their  vigorous  opposition.  They  demanded  a  candidate 
who  would  push  the  war  more  vigorously,  perhaps  more 
sternly,  in  this,  as  well  as  other  directions ;  and  they 
declared  Mr.  Chase  to  be  that  man.  Our  Secretary  met 
them  coyly  halfway.  Hoping  to  combine  in  his  favor 
all  these  elements  of  opposition  to  the  President,  he 
permitted  a  committee  of  Senators,  Congressmen,  and 
prominent  citizens  to  enter  upon  a  formal  canvass  for 
his  nomination. 


206       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

The  movement  in  behalf  of  Chase  was  headed  by  Sena- 
tor  Samuel  C.  Pomeroy  of  Kansas,  who  presently  issued 
the  secret  circular  that  is  known  in  history  by  his  name.68 
This  document  —  though  Chase  had  no  hand  in  it  —  was 
entirely  in  his  vein.  It  declared  that  the  reelection  of 
Lincoln  was  "practically  impossible"  ;  that  "the  cause  of 
human  liberty  and  the  dignity  of  the  nation"  suffered 
from  his  "tendency  toward  compromises  and  temporary 
expedients  " ;  that  "  the  application  of  the  one-term  prin- 
ciple" was  essential  to  the  safety  of  our  institutions ;  that 
in  the  Hon.  Salmon  P.  Chase  were  to  be  found  "more 
of  the  qualities  needed  in  a  President,  during  the  next 
four  years,"  than  were  "combined  in  any  other  available 
candidate"  ;  and  that  all  those  "in  favor  of  the  speedy  re- 
storation of  the  Union,  on  the  basis  of  universal  freedom," 
should  at  once  form  local  organizations  to  promote  his 
nomination.  Many  copies  of  the  circular  were  sent  out 
by  mail.  They  were  marked  "  Confidential,"  it  is  true,  but 
before  long  they  found  their  way  into  the  newspapers, 
much  to  Mr.  Chase's  embarrassment.  He  thereupon,  at 
once,  wrote  to  the  President,  disavowing  any  knowledge 
of  the  circular,  before  its  appearance  in  the  public  prints, 
but  admitting  his  connection,  as  a  candidate,  with  the 
Pomeroy  Committee.  "If  there  is  anything,"  he  added, 
"in  my  action  or  position  which,  in  your  judgment,  will 
prejudice  the  public  interest  under  my  charge,  I  beg  you 
to  say  so.  I  do  not  wish  to  administer  the  Treasury 
Department  one  day  without  your  entire  confidence.  For 
yourself  I  cherish  sincere  respect  and  esteem  ;  and,  permit 
me  to  add,  affection.  Differences  of  opinion  as  to  admin- 
istrative action  have  not  changed  these  sentiments ;  nor 
have  they  been  changed  by  assaults  upon  me  by  persons 
who  profess  themselves  the  special  representatives  of  your 
views  and  policy.  You  are  not  responsible  for  acts  not 
your  own ;  nor  will  you  hold  me  responsible  except  for 
what  I  do  or  say  myself."  OT 

Mr.  Lincoln,  with  characteristic  deliberation,  delayed 


AN   INDISPENSABLE   MAN         207 

his  answer  a  week.  Then  he  wrote  —  and  the  letter  is 
worth  quoting  almost  entire  :  — 

"  I  was  not  shocked  or  surprised  by  the  appearance  of 
the  letter,  because  I  had  had  knowledge  of  Mr.  Pomeroy's 
committee,  and  of  secret  issues  which,  I  supposed,  came 
from  it,  and  of  secret  agents  who,  I  supposed,  were  sent 
out  by  it,  for  several  weeks.  I  have  known  just  as  little 
of  these  things  as  my  friends  have  allowed  me  to  know. 
They  bring  the  documents  to  me,  but  I  do  not  read  them ; 
they  tell  me  what  they  think  fit  to  tell  me,  but  I  do  not 
inquire  for  more.  I  fully  concur  with  you  that  neither  of 
us  can  be  justly  held  responsible  for  what  our  respective 
friends  may  do  without  our  instigation  or  countenance ; 
and  I  assure  you,  as  you  have  assured  me,  that  no  assault 
has  been  made  upon  you  by  my  instigation,  or  with  my 
countenance.  Whether  you  shall  remain  at  the  head  of 
the  Treasury  Department  is  a  question  which  I  will  not 
allow  myself  to  consider  from  any  standpoint  other  than, 
my  judgment  of  the  public  service,  and,  in  that  view,  I 
do  not  perceive  occasion  for  a  change."  w 

This  seeming  indifference  of  the  President  to  his  Sec- 
retary's rivalry,  as  well  as  Mr.  Lincoln's  failure  to  respond 
to  that  gentleman's  professions  of  affection,  greatly  mor- 
tified Mr.  Chase.  He  had,  to  be  sure,  been  retained  in 
the  cabinet  under  conditions  that  would  ordinarily  have 
warranted  his  dismissal ;  but  the  relations  between  him 
and  his  superior  were,  from  that  time,  less  cordial  even 
than  ever. 

Lincoln's  attitude  toward  Chase's  electioneering  pro- 
jects reveals  the  President  at  his  full  stature.  It  affords 
a  view  of  the  master,  patient  in  his  strength,  under 
circumstances  that  would  have  tried  the  nerves  of  an 
Iron  Chancellor.  When  his  friends,  advising  at  the  very 
outset  against  a  cabinet  made  up  of  convention  rivals, 
predicted  that  some  of  the  aspirants  would  continue 
antagonistic  to  him,  he  is  reported  to  have  replied :  — 

"  No,  gentlemen,  the  times  are  too  grave  and  perilous 


208      LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF   MEN 

for  ambitious  schemes,  and  personal  rivalries.  I  need  the 
aid  of  all  of  these  men.  They  enjoy  the  confidence  of 
their  several  States  and  sections ;  and  they  will  strengthen 
the  administration."  w 

To  the  Secretaries  themselves  he  said :  — 

"  It  will  require  the  utmost  skill,  influence,  and  sagacity 
of  all  of  us  to  save  the  republic.  Let  us  forget  ourselves, 
and  join  hands  like  brothers  to  save  the  republic.  If  we 
succeed,  there  will  be  glory  enough  for  all." 70 

How  deaf  one  of  them  was  to  this  appeal  the  President 
had  soon  to  discover.  Yet  he  allowed  neither  his  disap- 
pointment nor  the  resulting  perplexities  to  modify  his 
high  opinion  of  Chase's  value  in  the  Treasury  Depart- 
ment. Although  Mr.  Lincoln,  as  the  minister  complained, 
may  never  have  expressed  to  him  sufficient  appreciation 
of  his  services,  the  President  certainly  did  so,  without 
reserve,  to  others.  "Of  all  the  great  men  I  have  ever 
known,"  said  he,  after  weighing  the  Secretary's  short- 
comings, "  Chase  is  equal  to  about  one  and  a  half  of  the 
best  of  them."71  When  Lincoln's  supporters,  moreover, 
called  his  attention  to  the  practices  by  which  the  man  in 
the  Treasury  was  advancing  his  political  fortunes,  at  the 
expense  of  the  administration,72  he  told  them :  — 

"  I  have  determined  to  shut  my  eyes,  so  far  as  possible, 
to  everything  of  the  sort.  Mr.  Chase  makes  a  good  Sec- 
retary, and  I  shall  keep  him  where  he  is.  If  he  becomes 
President,  all  right.  I  hope  we  may  never  have  a  worse 
man." 

Then,  turning  to  the  less  pleasing  aspect  of  the  affair, 
he  continued :  — 

44 1  have  observed  with  regret  his  plan  of  strengthening 
himself.  Whenever  he  sees  that  an  important  matter  is 
troubling  me,  if  I  am  compelled  to  decide  in  a  way  to 
give  offence  to  a  man  of  some  influence,  he  always  ranges 
himself  in  opposition  to  me  and  persuades  the  victim  that 
he  has  been  hardly  dealt  with,  and  that  he  would  have 
arranged  it  very  differently.  It  was  so  with  General 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN         209 

mont,  with  General  Hunter  when  I  annulled  his  hasty 
proclamation,  with  General  Butler  when  he  was  recalled 
from  New  Orleans,  with  these  Missouri  people  when  they 
called  the  other  day.  I  am  entirely  indifferent  as  to  his 
success  or  failure  in  these  schemes,  so  long  as  he  does  his 
duty  at  the  head  of  the  Treasury  Department." 73 

These  citations,  furthermore,  would  be  incomplete 
without  one  of  those  homely  stories  whereby  the  President 
was  wont  to  point  his  remarks.  He  narrated  it  to  Henry 
J.  Raymond,  when  the  famous  editor  called  his  attention 
to  the  danger  that  might  arise  from  Chase's  candidacy. 
"  Raymond,"  said  he,  "  you  were  brought  up  on  a  farm, 
were  you  not?  Then  you  know  what  a  'chin  fly'  is.  My 
brother  and  I  were  once  plowing  corn  on  a  Kentucky 
farm,  I  driving  the  horse,  and  he  holding  the  plow.  The 
horse  was  lazy ;  but  on  one  occasion  rushed  across  the 
field  so  that  I,  with  my  long  legs,  could  scarcely  keep 
pace  with  him.  On  reaching  the  end. of  the  furrow,  I 
found  an  enormous  'chin  fly'  fastened  upon  him,  and 
I  knocked  him  off.  My  brother  asked  me  what  I  did  that 
for.  I  told  him  I  did  n't  want  the  old  horse  bitten  in 
that  way.  '  Why,'  said  my  brother,  '  that 's  all  that  made 
him  go ! '  Now,  if  Mr.  Chase  has  a  presidential  '  chin 
fly '  biting  him,  I  'm  not  going  to  knock  him  off,  if  it  will 
only  make  his  department  go." 7i 

Only  a  true  leader  of  men  could  so  regard  the  competi- 
tion of  a  powerful  subordinate. 

It  should  not  be  supposed,  however,  as  some  eulogists  of 
the  President  would  have  us  think,  that  he  was  too  big  to 
regard  Chase's  pretensions  with  any  uneasiness.  Lincoln 
never  underrated  an  opponent.  He  owed  his  victories  as 
much  to  his  careful  measurement  of  the  men  with  whom 
he  had  to  deal  as  to  any  other  single  thing.  The  disaffec- 
tion of  many  influential  Republicans,  during  1863,  was 
painfully  apparent  to  him.  He  realized  how  strong  might 
be  Chase's  chances  for  the  nomination,  if  the  Secretary 
could  combine  upon  himself  the  support  of  these  leaders 


LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

and  of  their  constituencies.  Somewhat  of  this  apprehen- 
sion was  revealed  in  the  President's  discussion  of  the 
situation  with  Colonel  A.  K.  McClure,  the  Pennsylvania 
journalist  and  politician,  at  the  White  House,  one  even- 
ing, while  the  Chase  canvass  was  at  its  height.  The 
Colonel  belittled  the  movement,  but  failed  to  imbue  Mr. 
Lincoln  with  his  confidence  in  the  President's  renomi- 
nation.  Their  talk  lasted  well  into  the  night.  As  the 
visitor,  after  several  futile  attempts  to  take  his  leave, 
reached  the  door,  Lincoln  called  him  back  and  asked, 
with  a  twinkle  of  the  eye :  — 

"  By  the  way,  McClure,  how  would  it  do  if  I  were  to 
decline  Chase  ?  " 

The  Colonel,  surprised  at  the  novel  suggestion,  inquired 
as  to  how  that  could  be  done. 

"  Well,  I  don't  know  exactly  how  it  might  be  done," 
answered  Mr.  Lincoln,  "  but  that  reminds  me  of  a  story 
of  two  Democratic  candidates  for  Senator  in  '  Egypt,'  Illi- 
nois, in  its  early  political  times.  That  section  of  Illinois 
was  almost  solidly  Democratic,  as  you  know,  and  nobody 
but  Democrats  were  candidates  for  office.  Two  Democratic 
candidates  for  Senator  met  each  other  in  joint  debate,  from 
day  to  day,  and  gradually  became  more  and  more  exas- 
perated at  each  other ;  until  their  discussions  were  simply 
disgraceful  wrangles,  and  they  both  became  ashamed  of 
them.  They  finally  agreed  that  either  should  say  anything 
he  pleased  about  the  other,  and  it  should  not  be  resented 
as  an  offence ;  and  from  that  time  on,  the  campaign  pro- 
gressed without  any  special  display  of  ill-temper.  On  elec- 
tion night  the  two  candidates,  who  lived  in  the  same  town, 
were  receiving  their  returns  together;  and  the  contest  was 
uncomfortably  close.  A  distant  precinct  in  which  one  of 
the  candidates  confidently  expected  a  large  majority  was 
finally  reported  with  a  majority  against  him.  The  disap- 
pointed candidate  expressed  great  surprise,  to  which  the 
other  candidate  answered  that  he  should  not  be  surprised, 
as  he  had  taken  the  liberty  of  declining  him  in  that  dis- 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN         211 

trict,  the  evening  before  the  election.  He  reminded  the 
defeated  candidate  that  he  had  agreed  that  either  was  free 
to  say  anything  about  the  other,  without  offence  ;  and 
added  that,  under  that  authority,  he  had  gone  up  into  that 
district  and  taken  the  liberty  of  saying  that  his  opponent 
had  retired  from  the  contest ;  and  therefore  the  vote  of 
the  district  was  changed,  and  the  declined  candidate  was 
thus  defeated.  I  think,"  concluded  Lincoln,  with  one  of 
his  hearty  laughs,  "  I  had  better  decline  Chase."  ^ 

It  was  evident  to  Colonel  McClure  that  the  President 
then  seriously  considered  the  question  of  inducing  Chase 
to  decline,  and  that  what  he  said  in  jest  he  meant  in  sober 
earnest. 

For  some  months  Lincoln  was  tmcertain  how  the  defeat 
of  Chase  might  be  accomplished.  When  the  way  was  not 
clear  before  him,  he  could  sit  still  with  better  grace 
than  any  man  that  had  occupied  the  presidential  chair. 
Throughout  1863,  therefore,  he  made  no  public  sign.  To 
the  surprise  of  all  observers,  his  ambitious  Secretary  was 
suffered  to  push  the  work  of  opposition  against  him 
without  let  or  hindrance.  By  the  time  Chase  formally 
announced  himself  to  be  a  candidate,  however,  in  Janu- 
ary, 1864,  Lincoln  began  to  bring  his  forces  into  action. 
"  He  did  this,"  says  the  old  campaigner  last  quoted, 
"  with  a  degree  of  sagacity  and  method  that  would  have 
done  credit  to  the  ripest  politician  of  the  age."  The 
President's  friends  in  New  Hampshire,  Chase's  native 
State,  led  off  at  their  local  convention  by  voting  "  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  to  be  the  people's  choice  for  reelection." 
Some  weeks  thereafter,  a  Republican  caucus  of  the  legis- 
lature in  Ohio,  Chase's  State  by  adoption,  followed  with 
a  similar  resolution ;  and  Rhode  Island,  where  Senator 
Sprague,  Chase's  son-in-law,  held  sway,  lost  no  time  in 
arraying  itself  on  the  side  of  the  President.  From  all 
quarters,  indeed,  as  the  winter  advanced,  came  the  call 
for  his  renomination.  In  local  committees,  Union  League 
clubs,  State  legislatures,  and  State  conventions,  —  wher- 


212       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

ever  Republican  politicians  in  close  touch  with  the  voters 
came  together,  Lincoln  was  proclaimed  to  be  the  party's 
choice.78  How  much  of  this  was  due  to  a  skilful  manipu- 
lation of  his  supporters,  how  much  to  the  spontaneous 
esteem  of  the  people,  and  how  much  to  a  reaction  against 
Pomeroy's  ill-advised  circular,  we  may  never  know.  Suf- 
fice it  to  say  that  the  season  was  hardly  over  before  our 
Secretary  found  himself  swept  by  the  current  of  Lincoln's 
popularity  into  a  formal  withdrawal  from  the  contest. 

The  sincerity  of  Chase's  request 77  "  that  no  further 
consideration  be  given  "  to  his  name  was  open  to  question. 
One  of  the  Secretary's  supporters  describes  the  letter 
of  withdrawal  as  a  "  word  of  declination  diplomatically 
spoken  in  order  to  rouse  their  flagging  spirits."78  And 
there  are  indications  that  some  of  Chase's  adherents,  as 
well  as  he,  himself,  still  indulged  hopes,  all  his  disclaimers 
to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  of  somehow  diverting 
the  nomination  from  Lincoln.  Indeed,  his  comments  on 
the  President  during  the  spring  of  1864  were  especially 
censorious.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  all  things 
considered,  that  some  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  friends  who  had 
become  inimical  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  should 
have  regarded  him  at  the  time  with  increased  bitterness. 
Of  this  hostility  the  Blairs  furnished  a  notable  instance. 
They  had,  from  almost  the  beginning  of  the  administra- 
tion, been  at  feud  with  Chase.  He  was  a  Radical,  they 
were  Conservatives ;  he  made  no  secret  of  how  lightly 
he  regarded  the  President,  they  held  Mr.  Lincoln  in  high 
esteem ;  he  strove  to  discredit  and  supplant  his  chief,  they 
were  as  zealous,  though  not  a  whit  more  tactful,  in  that 
chief's  support.  Montgomery  Blair  in  the  cabinet,  and 
General  Francis  P.  Blair,  Jr.,  on  the  stump  or  in  Con- 
gress, lost  no  opportunity  for  assailing  their  common 
enemy.  Like  their  father,  Francis  Preston  Blair,  Sr., 
"Old  Hickory's"  friend  and  kitchen  counselor,  they  be- 
longed to  the  Jacksonian  school  of  politicians  —  aggres- 
sive, intense,  uncompromising.  "  The  Blairs,"  said  Mont' 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN         213 

gomery,  "  when  they  go  in  for  a  fight  go  in  for  a  funeral." 
They  undertook,  in  Chase's  case  at  least,  to  make  the 
boast  good.  Young  Frank's  attacks  upon  the  Secretary 
from  the  floor  of  the  House  culminated,  on  April  23,  in 
a  speech  which  assailed  him  with  extraordinary  violence. 
"Nobody  is  simple  enough,"  said  General  Blair,  "to 
believe  that  the  distinguished  Secretary  has  really  retired 
from  the  canvass  for  the  nomination  to  the  presidency, 
although  he  has  written  a  letter  declining  to  be  a  candi- 
date. That  letter  was  written  because  the  'strictly  pri- 
vate '  circular  of  the  Pomeroy  Committee  unearthed  his 
underground  and  underhand  intrigue  against  the  Presi- 
dent. It  was  such  a  disgraceful  and  disgusting  sight  to 
make  use  of  the  patronage  and  power  given  him  by  the 
President,  against  his  chief,  that  even  Chase  got  ashamed 
to  occupy  such  a  position  publicly.  For  that  reason  his 
letter  was  written.  He  wanted  to  get  down  under  the 
ground  and  work  there  in  the  dark  as  he  is  now  doing." 
The  speaker  accused  Mr.  Chase  of  disunion  sentiments, 
reiterated  charges  that  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  was 
"  sacrificing  a  vast  public  interest  to  advance  his  ambi- 
tion," and  asserted  that  corruption  pervaded  the  banking 
as  well  as  the  southern  trade  operations  of  the  finance 
department.79 

This  speech,  whatever  may  have  been  its  provocation, 
was  in  certain  particulars  nothing  short  of  scurrilous. 
Upon  hearing  of  it,  Chase  gave  way  to  what  one  of  his 
friends  termed  "Achillean  wrath."  His  fury  was  due 
mainly  to  the  fact  that  directly  after  it  was  delivered, 
seemingly  on  the  very  day,  indeed,  the  President  had 
revived  Blair's  commission  as  Major-General,  and  had  sent 
him  to  the  front  in  command  of  an  army  corps.  This  left 
no  doubt  in  the  Secretary's  mind  that  the  assault  had 
been  made  with  Mr.  Lincoln's  approval.  So  the  inevitable 
resignation  was  again  to  the  fore,  but  wise  friends  coun- 
seled delay.  Two  of  them  waited  upon  the  President. 
He  expressed  his  disapproval  of  the  speech  in  no 


214      LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF   MEN 

tain  language,  and  emphasized  the  injustice  of  holding 
the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  particularly  responsible  for 
the  trade  regulations  which  had  been  adopted  in  cabinet 
council.  As  to  Blair's  commission,  he  explained  that  the 
General  had  resigned  from  the  army  on  taking  his  seat 
in  Congress,  with  the  understanding  that  the  resignation 
might  be  withdrawn  at  his  own  pleasure,  if  he  should 
desire  to  reenter  the  service.  A  command  had  accordingly 
been  secured  for  Blair,  at  his  request,  several  weeks 
before,  and  it  was  merely  the  necessary  formality  of  his 
reinstatement  that  had  taken  place  on  the  day  of  the 
unfortunate  attack.  "  Within  three  hours,"  added  Mr. 
Lincoln,  "  I  heard  that  this  speech  had  been  made,  when 
I  knew  that  another  beehive  was  kicked  over.  My  first 
thought  was  to  have  canceled  the  orders,  restoring  him  to 
the  army  and  assigning  him  to  command.  Perhaps  this 
would  have  been  best.  On  such  reflection  as  I  was  able 
to  give  to  the  matter,  however,  I  concluded  to  let  them 
stand.  If  I  was  wrong  in  this,  the  injury  to  the  service 
can  be  set  right."80  With  this  explanation  Mr.  Chas* 
was  fain  to  be  content,  or  at  least  to  seem  so;  but  the 
barbs  of  the  Blairs  still  rankled  in  his  heart.  That  these 
inveterate  enemies,  moreover,  enjoyed,  without  apparent 
diminution,  the  protection,  even  the  affection,  of  the  Presi- 
dent, hardly  served  to  improve  the  Secretary's  temper. 
He  looked  upon  Mr.  Lincoln  as  an  accomplice  of  his 
traducers,  after  the  fact,  and  only  the  unanimous  advice 
of  his  friends  kept  him  at  his  post.81 

Meanwhile,  popular  sentiment  in  favor  of  the  Presi* 
dent's  renomination  became  more  and  more  pronounced. 
The  loyal  people  of  the  country  understood  him  better 
than  did  the  Washington  politicians  or  the  single-minded 
Radical  leaders.  From  all  walks  of  life  came  demands 
that  he  should  have  another  term.  Laborers,  farmers, 
mechanics,  merchants,  and  scholars,  alike  echoed  Profes- 
sor Gray's  dictum,  "  Homely,  honest,  ungainly  Lincoln  is 
the  representative  man  of  the  country."  8Z  As  delegation 


AN   INDISPENSABLE   MAN         215 

after  delegation  was  instructed  in  his  favor,  the  Presi- 
dent's renomiuation  appeared  to  be  a  foregone  conclu- 
sion ;  but  the  opposition  did  not  entirely  abandon  the 
field,  so  Lincoln  kept  his  eye  warily  on  it.  Within  two 
weeks  of  the  date  set  for  the  convention,  when  one  of  his 
supporters  sought  to  relieve  his  anxiety  by  pointing  out 
that  a  majority  of  the  delegates  were  committed  to  him, 
he  replied :  — 

"  Well,  McClure,  what  you  say  seems  to  be  unanswer- 
able, but  I  don't  quite  forget  that  I  was  nominated  for 
President  in  a  convention  that  was  two  thirds  for  the  other 
fellow."  " 

These  misgivings  were,  of  course,  groundless.  Th& 
Union-Republican  National  Convention  of  June  7,  1864, 
proved  to  be  not  at  all  "  for  the  other  fellow."  In  fact, 
strenuous  efforts  to  win  over  a  few  delegates  for  Mr.  Chase 
from  the  almost  solid  Lincoln  column  failed.  General 
Grant,  it  is  true,  on  the  roll-call  received  the  22  votes  of 
the  Missouri  Radicals,  —  cast  under  peremptory  instruc- 
tions, —  but  even  these  were  quickly  transferred  to  Mr. 
Lincoln,  in  order  that  he  might  have  the  honor  of  a  unan- 
imous nomination,  on  the  first  ballot. 

The  President's  brilliant  victory  in  the  Baltimore  Con- 
vention hardly  improved  the  already  sharp-set  temper 
of  his  finance  minister.  Chase  would  not,  indeed  could 
not  acknowledge  a  master.  He  was  as  ready  as  ever  to 
try  conclusions  with  Lincoln  ;  and  the  occasion,  his  final 
one, —  for  we  have  now  reached  the  last  of  these  remark- 
able encounters,  —  soon  presented  itself.  Early  in  June, 
John  J.  Cisco,  Assistant  Treasurer  of  the  United  States 
at  New  York,  proffered  his  resignation,  to  take  effect  at 
the  close  of  the  month.  This  office  was  surpassed  in  im- 
portance, financially  speaking,  by  that  of  the  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury,  alone.  To  appoint  a  satisfactory  suc- 
cessor accordingly  became  a  matter  of  weighty  consid- 
eration ;  especially  because  politics,  as  well  as  finance, 
had  to  be  taken  into  account.  So  we  find  Mr.  Chase,  at 


ai 6      LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

the  President's  request,  consulting  on  the  subject  with 
the  New  York  members  of  the  Upper  House,  particularly 
with  Senator  Edwin  D.  Morgan,  who  was  regarded  as 
representing,  in  a  way,  the  commercial  interests  of  the 
metropolis.  The  Senator  and  the  Secretary  agreed  suc- 
cessively upon  three  prominent  bankers,  who  each,  in 
turn,  declined  the  office.  Thereupon,  Mr.  Chase  decided 
to  name  Maunsell  B.  Field,  an  Assistant  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  who  had  previously  been  Mr.  Cisco's  deputy. 
This  met  with  Senator  Morgan's  spirited  opposition.  He 
urged  that  Mr.  Field  was  not  competent  for  the  place, 
and  that  his  appointment  would  be  hurtful  to  the  inter- 
ests of  their  party  in  New  York.  He  presented,  at  the 
same  time,  the  names  of  three  highly  esteemed  citizens, 
any  one  of  whom  the  Secretary  was  assured  would  be 
acceptable.  But  Mi-.  Chase  could  not  be  moved  from 
his  selection.  As  Field  was  one  of  his  favorites,  all  per- 
sonal objections  nettled  the  Secretary  ;  and  as  the  office 
was  one  involving  confidential  relations  with  the  head  of 
the  department,  these  efforts  to  apply  outside  political 
requirements  were  peculiarly  offensive  to  him.  Having 
made  sure  that  Field's  nomination  would  be  confirmed  by 
the  Senate,  Mr.  Chase,  without  further  ado,  laid  it,  on 
June  27,  before  the  President.  Mr.  Lincoln  answered  on 
the  following  day  :  — 

"  I  cannot,  without  much  embarrassment,  make  this 
appointment,  principally  because  of  Senator  Morgan's 
very  firm  opposition  to  it." 

The  writer  referred  to  the  men  whose  names  had  been 
last  submitted  by  the  Senator,  and  closed  with :  — 

"  It  will  really  oblige  me  if  you  will  make  choice  among 
these  three,  or  any  other  man  that  Senators  Morgan  and 
Harris  will  be  satisfied  with,  and  send  me  a  nomination 
for  him."  M 

The  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  however,  was  more  de- 
termined than  ever  to  resist  what,  as  in  former  instances, 
he  deemed  to  be  an  encroachment  upon  his  prerogatives. 


AN   INDISPENSABLE  MAN         217 

He  replied  by  note,  asking  for  a  personal  interview.  Re- 
ceiving no  answer,  he  despatched  to  Mr.  Cisco,  the  same 
day,  an  earnest  request  that  the  Assistant  Treasurer  retain 
his  place,  for  "  at  least  one  quarter  longer"  ;  and  sent  to 
the  President  another  letter,  setting  forth  his  reasons  for 
selecting  Mr.  Field.  To  this  Lincoln  rejoined  :  — 

"  When  I  received  your  note  this  forenoon,  suggesting 
a  verbal  conversation  in  relation  to  the  appointment  of  a 
successor  to  Mr.  Cisco,  I  hesitated,  because  the  difficulty 
does  not,  in  the  main  part,  lie  within  the  range  of  a  conver- 
sation between  you  and  me.  As  the  proverb  goes,  no  man 
knows  so  well  where  the  shoe  pinches  as  he  who  wears  it. 
I  do  not  think  Mr.  Field  a  very  proper  man  for  the  place, 
but  I  would  trust  your  judgment  and  forego  this  were  the 
greater  difficulty  out  of  the  way.  Much  as  I  personally 
like  Mr.  Barney,  it  has  been  a  great  burden  to  me  to  re- 
tain him  in  his  place,  when  nearly  all  our  friends  in  New 
York  were  directly  or  indirectly  urging  his  removal.  Then 
the  appointment  of  Judge  Hogeboom  to  be  general  ap- 
praiser brought  me  to,  and  has  ever  since  kept  me  at,  the 
verge  of  open  revolt.  Now  the  appointment  of  Mr.  Field 
would  precipitate  me  in  it  unless  Senator  Morgan  and 
those  feeling  as  he  does,  could  be  brought  to  concur  in  it. 
Strained  as  I  already  am  at  this  point,  I  do  not  think  I 
can  make  this  appointment  in  the  direction  of  still  greater 
strain.  The  testimonials  of  Mr.  Field,  with  your  accom- 
panying notes,  were  duly  received,  and  I  am  now  waiting 
to  see  your  answer  from  Mr.  Cisco."  ^ 

This  answer  came  within  a  few  hours.  It  averted  —  or 
seemed  to  avert  —  the  impending  crisis.  For  the  Assistant 
Treasurer,  as  requested,  withdrew  his  resignation. 

Here  the  incident  should  have  closed,  but  Mr.  Chase 
felt  that  the  President  had  not  treated  him  with  the  con- 
sideration which  was  his  due.  A  cabinet  minister  who  had 
rendered  such  signal  service  as  he,  and  whose  value  was 
emphasized  by  hosts  of  admirers,  ought,  once  for  all,  to 
have  complete  control  over  his  own  department.  It  shall 


2i 8       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

be  that,  thought  he,  or  nothing.  Mr.  Lincoln,  he  told  him- 
self, could  not  get  along  without  him,  —  certainly  not  in 
June,  1864,  when  the  financial  outlook  was  blacker  than  it 
had  been  at  any  time  since  Sumter  fell.  Gold  was  rising 
by  leaps  and  bounds,  with  the  national  credit,  for  a  brief 
period,  badly  shaken  ;  a  deficit  of  eighty  millions,  despite 
heavy  taxation,  foreshadowed  the  placing  of  still  heavier 
burdens  upon  the  people ;  and  the  Treasury  was  called 
upon  to  satisfy  a  regularly  recurring  demand  for  the 
almost  fabulous  sum  of  one  hundred  million  dollars  a 
month.  Now  was  the  time  to  discipline  the  President 
to  some  purpose;  for  all  those  previous  resignations  — 
however  Chase  may,  in  each  instance,  have  been  concil- 
iated—  had  evidently  failed  to  advance  the  Secretary's 
authority  one  step.  Accordingly,  his  next  letter  to  Mr. 
Lincoln  read,  in  part :  — 

"  The  withdrawal  of  Mr.  Cisco's  resignation,  which  I 
inclose,  relieves  the  present  difficulty ;  but  I  cannot  help 
feeling  that  my  position  here  is  not  altogether  agreeable 
to  you  ;  and  it  is  certainly  too  full  of  embarrassment,  and 
difficulty,  and  painful  responsibility,  to  allow  in  me  the 
least  desire  to  retain  it.  I  think  it  my  duty,  therefore,  to 
inclose  to  you  my  resignation."  w 

This  message  greatly  troubled  the  President.  It  is  said 
to  have  disturbed  him  more  than  any  matter  that  concerned 
him  personally  in  the  course  of  his  whole  administration ; 
but  he  saw  that  to  treat  this  resignation,  under  the  circum- 
stances, like  its  predecessors,  would  involve  a  virtual  abdi- 
cation of  his  proper  functions  in  favor  of  his  refractory 
minister.  Secretary  Chase  had  jogged  the  elbow  of  Fate 
once  too  often.  In  the  expressive  language  of  a  foreign 
idiom,  he  had  become  impossible.  On  the  following  day, 
therefore,  Mr.  Lincoln  wrote  to  him :  — 

"  Your  resignation  of  the  office  of  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  sent  me  yesterday,  is  accepted.  Of  all  I  have 
said  in  commendation  of  your  ability  and  fidelity  I  have 
nothing  to  unsay ;  and  yet  you  and  I  have  reached  a  point 


AN   INDISPENSABLE   MAN         219 

of  mutual  embarrassment  in  our  official  relations,  which 
it  seems  cannot  be  overcome  or  longer  sustained,  con- 
sistently with  the  public  service."  w 

So  the  overstrained  bond  between  these  two  remarkable 
men  was  snapped  at  last. 

That  Chase  should  cease  to  manage  the  Treasury  was 
regarded  on  all  sides  as  a  public  calamity.  "  Mr.  Presi- 
dent, this  is  worse  than  another  Bull  Run  defeat ! "  ex- 
claimed the  Register  of  the  department,  when  he  learned 
of  Mr.  Lincoln's  purpose.  "Pray,  let  me  go  to  Secre- 
tary Chase  and  see  if  I  cannot  induce  him  to  withdraw  his 
resignation.  Its  acceptance  now  might  cause  a  financial 
panic." 

"  I  will  tell  you  how  it  is  with  Chase,"  was  the  reply. 
"  It  is  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  for  a  man  to  fall  into 
a  bad  habit.  Chase  has  fallen  into  two  bad  habits.  One 
is  that  to  which  I  have  often  referred.  He  thinks  he  has 
become  indispensable  to  the  country ;  that  his  intimate 
friends  know  it,  and  he  cannot  comprehend  why  the  coun- 
try does  not  understand  it.  He  also  thinks  he  ought  to  be 
President ;  he  has  no  doubt  whatever  about  that.  It  is  in- 
conceivable to  him  why  people  have  not  found  it  out ;  why 
they  don't,  as  one  man,  rise  up  and  say  so.  He  is,  as  you 
say,  an  able  financier  ;  as  you  think,  without  saying  so,  he 
is  a  great  statesman,  and  at  the  bottom,  a  patriot.  Ordi- 
narily he  discharges  a  public  trust,  the  duties  of  a  public 
office,  with  great  ability  —  with  greater  ability  than  any 
man  I  know.  Mind,  I  say  ordinarily,  for  these  bad  habits 
seem  to  have  spoilt  him.  They  have  made  him  irritable, 
uncomfortable,  so  that  he  is  never  perfectly  happy  unless 
he  is  thoroughly  miserable,  and  able  to  make  everybody 
else  just  as  uncomfortable  as  he  is  himself.  He  knows  that 
the  nomination  of  Field  would  displease  the  Unionists  of 
New  York,  would  delight  our  enemies,  and  injure  our 
friends.  He  knows  that  I  could  not  make  it  without  seri- 
ously offending  the  strongest  supporters  of  the  government 
in  New  York,  and  that  the  nomination  would  not  strengthen 


220      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

him  anywhere  or  with  anybody.  Yet  he  resigns  because  I 
will  not  make  it.  He  is  either  determined  to  annoy  me, 
or  that  I  shall  pat  him  on  the  shoulder  and  coax  him  to 
stay.  I  don't  think  I  ought  to  do  it.  I  will  not  do  it.  I 
will  take  him  at  his  word."  ^ 

The  tidings  that  Secretary  Chase  had  resigned  once 
too  often  brought  a  cloud  of  eminent  protestants  to  the 
White  House.  Most  urgent  among  these  were  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Senate  Committee  on  Finance,  who  came  in 
a  body.  They  too  believed,  for  the  most  part,  that  the 
withdrawal  of  Chase  from  the  Treasury  Department,  at 
that  time,  would  be  a  misfortune.  Some  of  them,  more- 
over, let  it  be  seen  that  they  did  not  hold  the  President 
free  from  blame  for  the  rupture.  Lincoln  received  the 
Senators  cordially.  A  frank  discussion  ensued.89  He  re- 
counted, incident  for  incident,  the  story  of  his  painful 
relations  with  this  minister,  who  seemed  incapable  of 
understanding  that  the  President,  not  his  Secretaries, 
must  command ;  and  nothing  urged  by  the  Senators 
could  move  him  from  his  conclusion  that  Mr.  Chase's 
usefulness  as  a  cabinet  officer  was  at  an  end.  "I  will 
not  longer,"  said  Lincoln,  "  continue  the  association.  I 
am  ready  and  willing  to  resign  the  office  of  President, 
and  let  you  have  Mr.  Hamlin  for  your  President ;  but  I 
will  no  longer  endure  the  state  I  have  been  in."90  This 
was  sufficiently  emphatic.  The  Committee  withdrew,  and 
on  the  following  day  their  Chairman,  William  Pitt  Fes- 
senden,  became,  amidst  enthusiastic  approval,  Chase's 
successor. 

No  one,  it  is  safe  to  say,  was  more  surprised  at  the 
turn  affairs  had  taken  than  the  whilom  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  himself.  He  had  confidently  expected  the  Pre- 
sident to  put  this  resignation  through  the  course  of  its 
numerous  predecessors.  That  Mr.  Lincoln  took  a  differ- 
ent tack  was  greatly  to  his  disappointment.  There  is 
even  a  tinge  of  bitterness  in  the  regrets  confided  to  his 
diary.  "I  had  found,"  writes  Mr.  Chase,  commenting 


AN   INDISPENSABLE   MAN         221 

naively  on  the  President's  final  letter,  "  a  good  deal  of 
embarrassment  from  him  ;  but  what  he  had  found  from 
me  I  could  not  imagine,  unless  it  has  been  caused  by  my 
unwillingness  to  have  offices  distributed  as  spoils  or  bene- 
fits, with  more  regard  to  the  claims  of  divisions,  factious, 
cliques,  and  individuals,  than  to  fitness  of  selection." 91 
Yet  the  writer  —  as  this  same  diary  abundantly  indicates 
—  would  gladly  have  resumed  those  embarrassments. 
When  a  friend  told  him  how  kindly  the  President  had 
spoken  of  him,  a  few  days  before  the  resignation,  Chase 
sadly  replied  that  such  expressions  of  good-will,  had  they 
reached  him  in  time,  would  have  averted  the  trouble ; M 
and  when  the  new  Secretary  repeated  to  his  predecessor 
what  Mr.  Lincoln  had  conceded  concerning  appointments, 
Mr.  Chase  made  lamentation  after  this  fashion  :  — 

"  Had  the  President,  in  reply  to  my  note  tendering  my 
resignation,  expressed  himself  as  he  did  now  to  Mr.  Fes- 
senden,  I  should  have  cheerfully  withdrawn  it."  M 

Even  after  Chase  had  retired  from  the  department, 
his  supporters  did  not  despair  of  his  return.  The  most 
potent  among  them,  Charles  Sumner,  once  suggested  to 
the  ex-Secretary  that  the  President  would  perhaps  recall 
him,  as  Louis  XVI  had  twice  recalled  Necker.  To  which 
Chase  replied :  — 

"That  might  be  if  Mr.  Lincoln  were  King  and  not 
politician."  94 

Before  the  year  was  out,  however,  that  politician 
evinced  how  immeasurably  he  towered  above  the  states- 
man who  had  so  persistently  antagonized  him,  by  nom- 
inating Mr.  Chase  to  the  Chief-Justiceship  of  the  Su- 
preme Court.95 

Three  months  after  the  appointment,  Lincoln  entered 
the  eastern  portico  of  the  capitol  for  his  second  inau- 
guration. If  his  thoughts,  as  he  stepped  upon  the  plat- 
form, reverted  to  the  incidents  of  that  other  ceremony 
which  had  taken  place  on  the  same  spot,  just  four  years 
before,  he  may  have  missed  the  defeated  rival,  who  tli«n 


LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

came  forward  to  hold  the  President's  hat  while  he  took 
the  oath  of  office.  Douglas,  indeed,  had  closed  his  last 
earthly  canvass  ;  but  another  proud  opponent  of  the  vic- 
torious Magistrate  stood  beside  him,  as  if  to  take  the 
"Little  Giant's"  place.  It  was  Salmon  P.  Chase.  By 
virtue  of  his  new  office,  he  administered  the  oath  and 
held  the  book  for  Abraham  Lincoln  to  kiss. 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE  CURBING  OF  STANTON 

EDWIN  MCMASTERS  STANTON  made  the  third  member 
of  Mr.  Lincoln's  great  cabinet  triad.  Unlike  Seward  and 
Chase,  he  brought  to  the  government  neither  the  experi- 
ence nor  the  prestige  that  commonly  results  from  a  long 
period  of  public  service.  Engrossed  in  the  practice  of  his 
profession  at  the  bar,  he  had  managed  in  his  maturer 
years  to  eschew  active  politics,1  until  his  brilliant  work 
before  the  Supreme  Court  had  secured  to  him,  early  in 
1858,  a  retainer  as  special  counsel  for  the  United  States 
on  what  were  called  the  California  Land  Cases.  So  ably 
had  these  been  conducted  that  President  Buchanan,  less 
than  two  years  thereafter,  appointed  him  Attorney-Gen- 
eral. In  that  capacity  Mr.  Stanton  had  straightway  be- 
come the  most  forceful  of  those  advisers  who  saved  from 
disgrace  the  closing  days  of  a  crumbling  administration. 
The  courage  and  skill  with  which  he  had  opposed  the 
intrigues  of  the  secessionists  in  the  cabinet  gained  for 
him  —  Democrat  though  he  was  —  the  confidence  of  lead- 
ing Republicans.  His  ardent  patriotism,  indeed,  seemed 
to  outrun  party  fealty.  He  had  gone  so  far  as  to  hold 
secret  conferences  with  Seward,  Sumner,  Wilson,  Dawes, 
Howard,  Ashley,  and  others,  who  have  borne  testimony 
to  the  value  of  his  services,  especially  during  the  critical 
period  that  directly  preceded  Mr.  Lincoln's  inauguration. 
After  that  event,  Mr.  Stanton,  having  resumed  his  prac- 
tice in  Washington,  became  an  anxious  observer  of  the 
new  government. 

Notwithstanding  his  timely  cooperation,  while  Attorney- 
General,  with  Republican  Senators  and  Congressmen, 


224      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

Stanton  looked  askance  at  the  man  whom  they  had  ele- 
vated to  the  presidency.  The  two  had  met,  several  years 
before,  under  conditions  that  left  no  favorable  impression 
in  the  recollection  of  either.  As  associate  counsel  with 
George  Harding,  in  the  famous  reaper  case  of  McCormick 
vs.  Manny,  they  had  appeared  for  the  defendant,  before 
Judges  McLean  and  Drummond,  in  the  United  States 
Circuit  Court,  at  Cincinnati.  When  the  trial  began,  it 
was  found  that  the  plaintiff  had  but  two  advocates,  E.  N. 
Dickerson  and  Reverdy  Johnson,  the  leader  of  the  Mary- 
land bar.  They  expressed  their  willingness  to  have  the 
three  counsel  of  the  other  side  heard,  if  Mr.  Dickerson, 
who  was  to  make  the  argument  on  the  mechanical  phases 
of  their  case,  might  speak  twice  and  Mr.  Johnson  once. 
This  the  attorney  who  had  charge  of  the  defence  of  course 
declined.  He  preferred  to  withdraw  a  representative, — 
but  which  one  was  it  to  be?  Mr.  Harding,  then  at  the 
zenith  of  his  fame  as  a  patent  lawyer,  had  been  retained 
especially  to  make  the  technical  argument.  Choice  for 
the  forensic  address,  therefore,  lay  between  Lincoln  and 
Stanton.  The  latter  was  selected,  to  Mr.  Lincoln's  keen 
disappointment.  He  had  looked  forward  to  an  active  par- 
ticipation in  the  trial,  not  only  on  account  of  the  impor- 
tant interests  involved,  but  also  because  he  was  glad  of 
the  chance  to  measure  his  strength  against  that  of  the 
renowned  Baltimore  pleader.  Lincoln's  chagrin,  more- 
over, was  greatly  intensified  by  Stanton's  behavior.  It  is 
not  true,  as  has  been  generally  reported,  that  the  man 
from  Springfield  was  elbowed  out  of  the  case  by  his  east- 
ern colleague ;  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  what  at 
best  was  a  mortifying  experience  for  Lincoln  became 
doubly  so  by  reason  of  the  other's  rudeness.  Our  prairie 
lawyer,  though  he  ranked  high  at  home,  made  a  poor 
impression  upon  Stanton,  who  described  him,  in  his  acrid 
«vay,  as  a  "  long,  lank  creature  from  Illinois,  wearing  a 
dirty  linen  duster  for  a  coat,  on  the  back  of  which  the 
perspiration  had  splotched  wide  stains  that  resembled  a 


THE   CURBING  OF   STANTON     225 

map  of  the  continent."  What  was  worse,  Mr.  Stanton 
made  no  secret  of  his  disdain.  The  object  of  it  overheard 
him  inquiring,  — 

"  Where  did  that  long-armed  creature  come  from,  and 
what  can  he  expect  to  do  in  this  case  ?  " 

So  gross,  indeed,  were  the  discourtesies  to  which  Lin- 
coln was  subjected  from  this  quarter,  that  his  magnani- 
mous soul  for  some  time  harbored  bitter  feeling.  "  I  have 
never  been  so  brutally  treated  as  by  that  man  Stanton," 
was  his  comment  on  the  affair  ;  and  low  as  was  this  gauge 
of  Stanton's  breeding,  it  corresponded  closely  enough  with 
that  worthy's  estimate  of  Lincoln's  ability.2 

The  relations  between  the  two  men  underwent  no  im- 
provement, even  when  the  humiliated  associate  of  a  few 
years  before  became  President.  What  dislikes  are  so 
deep-rooted  as  those  for  which  no  adequate  reason  can 
be  given  ?  And  what  public  man  of  his  day  was  so  good 
a  hater  as  Edwin  M.  Stanton?  His  recent  connection, 
moreover,  with  Buchanan's  somewhat  discredited  regime, 
together  with  his  vehement,  impatient  patriotism,  hardly 
served  to  temper  his  opinion  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  or  of  the 
new  administration's  temporizing  policy.3  In  view,  too,  of 
the  faultfinding  and  distrust  which  then  marked  the  con- 
duct of  those  who  stood  nearest  to  the  President,  it  is  not 
surprising  that  an  outsider,  so  prejudiced  as  Mr.  Stanton, 
should  indulge  in  adverse  criticism.  We  are  not  pre- 
pared, however,  for  the  harsh  expressions  that  he  scattered 
through  his  private  letters,  in  the  spring  and  summer  of 
1861. 

"No  one,"  wrote  he  to  Major-General  John  A.  Dix, 
"  can  imagine  the  deplorable  condition  of  this  city,  and 
the  hazard  of  the  government,  who  did  not  witness  the 
weakness  and  panic  of  the  administration,  and  the  painful 
imbecility  of  Lincoln."  4 

To  ex-President  Buchanan  he  writes :  — 

"  A  strong  feeling  of  distrust  in  the  candor  and  sin- 
cerity of  Lincoln  personally  and  of  his  cabinet  has  sprung 


226       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

up.  If  they  had  been  merely  silent  and  secret,  there 
might  have  been  no  ground  of  complaint.  But  assurances 
are  said  to  have  been  given  and  declarations  made  in 
conflict  with  the  facts  now  transpiring,  in  respect  to  the 
South,  so  that  no  one  speaks  of  Lincoln  or  any  member 
of  his  cabinet  with  respect  or  regard." 

In  other  letters  to  Buchanan,  Stanton  charges  the 
administration  with  "  peculation  and  fraud,"  the  trend 
of  affairs  is  supposed  to  have  excited  "  distrust  in  every 
department  of  the  government,"  "  it  is  said  that  Lin- 
coln takes  the  precaution  of  seeing  no  strangers  alone," 
it  is  believed  that  "  in  less  than  thirty  days  Davis  will  be 
in  possession  of  Washington,"  there  are  "  reports  of  the 
trepidation  of  Lincoln"  after  the  Baltimore  riot,  "it  is 
certain  that  the  administration  is  panic-stricken  for  some 
cause,"  and  so  on.  During  the  week  that  was  ushered  in 
by  the  defeat  at  Bull  Run,  Mr.  Stanton  wrote :  — 

"The  imbecility  of  this  administration  culminated  in 
that  catastrophe ;  and  irretrievable  misfortune  and  na- 
tional disgrace,  never  to  be  forgotten,  are  to  be  added  to 
the  ruin  of  all  peaceful  pursuits  and  national  bankruptcy, 
as  the  result  of  Lincoln's '  running  the  machine,'  for  five 
months.  ...  It  is  not  unlikely  that  some  change  in  the 
War  and  Navy  Departments  may  take  place,  but  none 
beyond  those  two  departments  until  Jeff  Davis  turns 
out  the  whole  concern." 

This  correspondence  was  not  given  to  the  public  until 
some  years  after  the  war-5  Even  then,  several  of  the  letters 
to  Mr.  Buchanan  we^e  charitably  suppressed  by  his  bio- 
grapher, because  they  were  so  violent  in  their  denuncia- 
tions. Mr.  Stanton,  however,  at  the  time,  made  no  secret 
of  this  hostility.  His  irritation,  when  quickened  by  dis- 
cussion, found  vent  among  friends,  in  coarse  epithets. 
According  to  at  least  two  chroniclers,  he  spoke  of  the 
President  as  "  a  low,  cunning  clown." e  According  to 
another,  he  habitually  referred  to  Mr.  Lincoln  as  the 
*'  original  gorilla,"  and  "  often  said  that  Du  Chaillu  was  a 


227 

fool  to  wander  all  the  way  to  Africa,  in  search  of  what  he 
could  so  easily  have  found  at  Springfield,  Illinois." 7  Mr. 
Stanton  went  so  far,  it  is  reported,  as  to  join  the  advocates 
of  a  revolutionary  scheme,  by  means  of  which  a  military 
dictator  was  to  displace  the  President.  In  short,  from  the 
day  of  their  first  meeting  in  Cincinnati,  until  deep  into 
the  first  year  of  the  war,  he  looked  upon  Mr.  Lincoln 
with  contempt. 

What  change,  if  any,  Mr.  Stanton's  attitude  had  un- 
dergone by  January,  1862,  is  not  known.  Howbeit,  on 
the  13th  of  that  month,  the  President,  brushing  personal 
feelings  aside,  nominated  him  to  succeed  Simon  Cameron 
as  Secretary  of  War.  Though  Stanton  had  been  a  supported 
of  Breckinridge,  the  southern  Democratic  candidate  in 
the  canvass  of  I860,8  he  had,  thereafter,  as  we  have  seen, 
given  signal  evidence  of  his  fidelity  to  Union  principles. 
The  time,  moreover,  had  come  for  breaking  down  the  par- 
tisan barriers  which  divided  northern  patriots,  so  that  the 
government  might  call  to  its  aid  friends  of  the  Constitu- 
tion in  whatever  party  they  might  be  found.  This,  of 
course,  rendered  Mr.  Stanton's  aggressive  Democracy  an 
advantage,  in  Mr.  Lincoln's  eyes.  It  was,  in  fact,  one  of 
the  considerations  which  determined  his  selection.  The 
appointment,  which  had  been  urged  by  Secretaries  Seward 
and  Chase,  as  well  as  by  the  retiring  incumbent,  had  the 
approval,  too,  of  Radical  members  in  both  Houses  of  Con- 
gress. It  was  promptly  accepted  and  as  promptly  confirmed. 

The  elevation  of  Mr.  Stanton  to  an  important  place  in 
the  Lincoln  cabinet  was  a  surprise  to  the  nation.  And  his 
consent  to  associate  himself  with  that  administration 
aroused  the  still  greater  wonder  of  his  own  friends.  One 
of  them,  who  knew  from  frequent  outbursts  of  scorn  how 
the  appointee  regarded  the  President,  referred  to  this  feel- 
ing when  he  asked  the  new  Secretary :  — 

"What  will  you  do?" 

Mr.  Stanton,  ignoring  the  purport  of  the  question,  an- 
swered, among  other  things  :  — 


228       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

"  I  will  make  Abe  Lincoln  President  of  the  United 
States." 9 

To  another  old  friend  he  wrote,  in  confidence  :  — 

"  I  hold  ray  present  post  at  the  request  of  a  President 
who  knew  me  personally,  but  to  whom  I  had  not  spoken 
from  the  4th  of  March,  1861,  until  the  day  he  handed  me 
my  commission.  I  knew  that  everything  I  cherish  and 
hold  dear  would  be  sacrificed  by  accepting  office.  But  I 
thought  I  might  help  to  save  the  country,  and  for  that 
I  was  willing  to  perish."  10 

To  Mr.  Buchanan  he  wrote  :  — 

"My  accession  to  my  present  position  was  quite  as 
sudden  and  unexpected  as  the  confidence  you  bestowed 
upon  me  in  calling  me  to  your  cabinet,  and  the  responsi- 
ble trust  was  accepted  in  both  instances  from  the  same 
motives,  and  will  be  executed  with  the  same  fidelity  to  the 
Constitution  and  laws."  u 

The  letters  state  what  the  conversation  implies.  To- 
gether they  indicate  the  spirit  in  which  Mr.  Stanton 
entered  upon  his  office.  He  clearly  believed  himself  sum- 
moned, a  second  time,  to  strengthen  the  hands  of  an 
impotent  President. 

However  grossly  Edwin  M.  Stanton  may  have  mis- 
judged Mr.  Lincoln,  his  confidence  in  himself  was  well 
founded.  A  glance  at  the  new  war  minister's  burly,  thick- 
set body  revealed  something  of  the  force  coiled  within. 
His  leonine  head,  with  its  mass  of  black,  curling  hair  and 
long,  slightly  grizzled  beard,  gave  promise  of  strength, 
which  the  keen,  bespectacled  eyes,  no  less  than  the  full, 
resolute  lips,  appeared  to  confirm.  In  a  physique  capable, 
despite  chronic  asthma,  of  almost  unlimited  endurance,  he 
nourished  an  intellect  trained  to  equally  sustained  labor. 
"  It  is  by  work  that  we  govern,"  said  a  powerful  king,  and 
Stanton  was  in  this  particular  equipped  to  be  a  ruler  of 
men.  He  brought  to  his  undertakings  a  degree  of  energy 
which,  according  to  contemporaries  at  the  bar,  had  no 
parallel.  Neither  his  knowledge  of  the  law,  comprehen- 


THE   CURBING  OF  STANTON     229 

sive  though  it  was,  nor  an  eloquence  that  evoked  praise 
from  eminent  advocates,  had  contributed  so  largely  to  his 
successes  as  the  ardor,  persistence,  quickness  of  percep- 
tion, executive  swing,  and  promptitude  of  action  with 
which  he  plunged  into  the  conduct  of  a  case.  When  com- 
plicated details  were  to  be  mastered,  night  and  day  seemed 
to  him  as  one.  In  fact,  had  testimony  on  this  point  been 
required,  any  of  his  associates  might  have  said  concern- 
ing him,  as  Cecil  did  of  Raleigh,  "  I  know  that  he  can  toil 
terribly."  Intense  earnestness  marked  Stanton's  every  act. 
His  enthusiasm  for  any  cause  which  he  had  espoused 
would  allow  of  no  divided  attention.  So  sharply,  indeed, 
were  all  his  faculties  focused  upon  the  purpose  of  the 
hour,  that,  he  is  to  be  classed  among  the  one-idea  men 
of  history.  Whatever  came  between  him  and  his  goal 
encountered  an  iron  will.  He  was  not  to  be  swerved  to 
the  right,  or  to  the  left ;  nor  could  he  easily  be  reconciled 
to  a  backward  step,  however  expedient.  The  tenacity  of 
conviction  which,  at  times,  characterized  his  conduct  must 
be  ascribed  —  after  due  allowance  for  a  masterful  temper 
—  to  religious  feeling.  Like  the  Roundhead  and  Cove- 
nanter leaders  to  whom  he  has  been  compared,  Stanton 
not  only  discerned  the  hand  of  the  Lord  in  human  affairs, 
but  also  believed  himself,  on  more  than  one  occasion,  to  be 
an  instrument  of  the  divine  will.  This  may  account,  too, 
for  the  emotional  quality  in  an  otherwise  practical  nature. 
Extremes  of  reason  and  passion  were  here  strangely  com- 
mingled. Quick  to  penetrate  through  the  husks  of  a  fraud 
into  the  very  nubbin  of  things,  he  was  even  more  swiftly 
moved  by  relentless  wrath  to  insist  upon  exposure  and 
punishment.  That  brief  career  in  Buchanan's  cabinet 
had  been  long  enough  to  demonstrate  his  almost  savage 
hostility  towards  official  dishonesty,  as  well  as  his  moral 
courage  to  grapple  with  treason  in  high  places.  Above 
all,  he  evinced  a  loyalty  to  the  Union  that  rose  above  the 
partisan  creed  of  a  lifetime  —  that  might,  in  fact,  demand 
of  him,  and  not  be  denied,  any  sacrifice,  however  great. 


230       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

So  strong  a  character  is  seldom  free  from  the  defects 
almost  inherent  in  its  rugged  structure.  As  Mr.  Stanton's 
drafts  on  his  own  powers  were  invariably  honored,  he  was 
unsparing  in  his  demands  upon  others.  Niggardly  of 
praise  and  caustic  in  criticism,  he  set  up  a  high  standard 
of  achievement,  with  no  charity  for  those  who  fell  below 
it.  This  led  him  to  underrate  most  of  the  persons  with 
whom  he  came  in  contact,  while  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
any  one  enjoyed  his  unqualified  confidence.  Slow  to  recog- 
nize what  was  good  in  a  man,  he  not  infrequently  gave 
way,  over  slight  shortcomings,  to  violent  outbursts  of 
anger.  His  very  earnestness,  at  times,  even  when  there 
were  no  such  provocations,  rendered  him  offensively  ag- 
gressive. Tact  had  but  a  small  place  in  Stanton's  make-up. 
He  drove  his  wedge  broad  end  foremost.  Not  only  was 
he  lacking  in  the  grace  that  sometimes  transforms  an 
enemy  into  a  friend,  but  he  was  equally  incapable  of  con- 
trolling a  temper  that,  on  more  than  one  occasion,  changed 
a  friend  into  an  enemy.  After  his  brusque,  impulsive 
manner,  he  scorned  ceremony  or  etiquette.  With  rude 
hands  he  brushed  aside  whatever  stood  in  his  way.  He 
might  have  sat  for  these  lines  in  a  notable  portrait  of 
Gladstone :  "  Side  issues,  risks,  the  feelings  of  friends,  the 
prejudices  of  the  day,  the  lions  in  the  path  —  all  would  be 
either  ignored,  or  only  recognized  to  be  thrust  aside,  when 
he  had  some  great  end  immediately  in  view ;  and  thus  he 
has  been  looked  upon  by  many  as  a  sort  of  Juggernaut, 
who,  to  attain  his  end,  would  drive  remorselessly  over  the 
bodies  of  men." 

When  thwarted,  Stanton's  rage,  taking  note  of  neither 
time,  place,  nor  person,  expressed  itself  with  cutting  preci- 
sion ;  and  his  disregard  of  what  was  thought,  or  said,  about 
him,  in  return,  rendered  him  an  anomaly  in  public  life. 
Though  careless  of  popularity,  he  loved  deeply  the  few  upon 
whom  he  bestowed  his  affections.  If  these  might  be  cred- 
ited, there  was  nothing  of  the  bear  about  this  fierce  Orson 
but  bis  skin.  They  have  recalled  how  easily  his  mood 


THE  CURBING   OF   STANTON     231 

shifted  from  storm  to  sunshine,  and  how  tenderly  his  heart 
responded  to  humble  suffering.  But  at  this  very  point 
the  corresponding  shadow  in  the  portrait  is  darker  than 
elsewhere  ;  for  the  unfortunates,  who,  with  or  without 
cause,  excited  his  dislike,  were  not  safe  against  insult, 
injustice,  and  even  persecution.  Some  of  the  man's  per- 
sonal prejudices  would  not  have  been  pounded  out  of  him 
if  he  had  been  brayed  in  a  mortar.  Even  when  shown  that 
he  had  erred,  Stanton  could  with  difficulty  be  induced  to 
modify  his  antagonisms.  He  rarely  made  amends,  and  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  he  ever  brought  himself  to  say, 
"  I  was  wrong."  His  firmness  degenerated,  at  times,  into 
sheer  obstinacy ;  his  enthusiasm,  into  intolerance ;  his 
strength  of  will,  into  arrogance.  No  one  who  knew  the 
man  courted  an  encounter  with  him.  Only  a  master  of 
masters  could  control  such  an  embodiment  of  force. 

At  the  time  of  his  appointment,  Mr.  Stanton  had,  in 
some  degree,  manifested  most,  if  not  all,  of  these  traits. 
They  boded  no  good  for  the  harmony  of  the  cabinet,  nor 
for  the  President's  authority.  So  thought  the  friends 
who  warned  Mr.  Lincoln  that  nothing  could  be  done  with 
such  a  man,  unless  he  were  allowed  to  have  his  own  way. 
There  appeared  to  be  abundant  ground,  moreover,  for 
their  comforting  prediction  that  "  Stanton  would  run 
away  with  the  whole  concern."  Strangely  enough,  the 
President  showed  no  alarm.  He  was  merely  reminded  of 
a  little  story. 

"  We  may  have  to  treat  him,"  said  he,  "  as  they  are 
sometimes  obliged  to  treat  a  Methodist  minister  I  know 
of  out  West.  He  gets  wrought  up  to  so  high  a  pitch  of 
excitement  in  his  prayers  and  exhortations,  that  they  are 
obliged  to  put  bricks  into  his  pockets  to  keep  him  down. 
We  may  be  obliged  to  serve  Stanton  the  same  way,  but 
I  guess  we  '11  let  him  jump  awhile  first."  12 

The  ability  and  self-sacrificing  patriotism  with  which 
the  appointee  administered,  from  the  outset,  the  affairs 
of  his  office,  secured  to  him  the  President's  unreserved 


232       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

confidence.  "  I  have  faith,"  said  Mr.  Lincoln,  speaking 
of  the  new  minister  and  another,  "in  affirmative  men  like 
these.  They  stand  between  a  nation  and  perdition."  He 
not  only  permitted  Mr.  Stanton  largely  to  control  the 
details  of  the  War  Department,  but  in  matters  of  gen- 
eral policy  as  well,  he  frequently  deferred  to  that  officer's 
judgment.  Men  of  such  dissimilar  temperaments,  however, 
working  together  toward  a  common  end  in  wholly  unlike 
ways,  naturally  had  frequent  differences  of  opinion.  Their 
very  earnestness  bred  trouble.  Mr.  Stanton,  moreover, 
conducting  his  department  solely  with  regard  to  military 
requirements,  could  not  fail  to  clash  with  a  President  who 
had  to  face  the  complex  problems  of  a  civil  war,  in  their 
political  as  well  as  their  strategic  aspects.  But  Mr.  Lin- 
coln fathomed  the  man  with  whom  he  had  to  deal.  When 
a  misunderstanding  arose,  he  ignored  the  Secretary's 
flashes  of  temper,  and  fixed  his  attention  on  the  ques- 
tion at  issue.  Indeed,  the  President  exercised  tact  enough 
for  both  of  them.  Whether  he  withdrew  from  a  position 
because  it  was  proved  to  be  wrong,  or  maintained  it  be- 
cause it  was  right,  he  seldom  failed  to  treat  Mr.  Stanton 
with  delicate  consideration.13  How  far  this  consideration 
went  is  an  interesting  subject  for  inquiry,  particularly  in 
view  of  the  not  uncommon  opinion  that  the  fiery  war 
minister  dominated  the  President.  Such  incidents  as  gave 
rise  to  this  belief  were  neither  numerous  nor  conclusive ; 
yet  in  them  may  be  discerned  the  grain  of  truth  from 
which  the  error  sprouted. 

Throughout  the  entire  period  of  the  war,  Mr.  Lincoln 
was  beset,  early  and  late,  by  people  who  wanted  personal 
favors  in  matters  that  properly  fell  under  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  War  Department.  Those  who  came  with  an  appeal 
from  Mr.  Stanton's  decision  were  sometimes  received  as 
was  Judge  Baldwin  of  California.  He  applied  for  a  pass 
through  the  lines  to  visit  his  brother  in  Virginia.  As 
both  of  them  were  Union  men,  there  seemed  to  be  no 
good  reason  why  it  should  not  be  granted. 


THE   CURBING  OF   STANTON     233 

"Have you  applied  to  General  Halleck?"  inquired  the 
President. 

"Yes,"  answered  the  Judge,  "and  met  with  a  flat 
refusal." 

"  Then  you  must  see  Stanton,"  said  Mr.  Lincoln. 

"I  have,  and  with  the  same  result,"  was  the  reply. 

"Well,  then,"  rejoined  the  President,  with  a  smile,  "I 
can  do  nothing ;  for  you  must  know  that  I  have  very 
little  influence  with  this  administration."  14 

The  same  answer,  though  s}'inpathetically  uttered,  con- 
cluded an  interview  with  a  soldier's  widow  who  asked  for 
a  sutler's  appointment,  which  the  Secretary  of  War  had, 
under  the  regulations,  refused.15  In  fact,  this  whimsical 
disclaimer  of  "  influence  "  with  the  administration  became 
one  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  favorite  resources.16  Commenting  on 
the  remark,  at  the  time,  to  a  cabinet  officer,  he  said :  — 

"  I  cannot  always  know  whether  a  permit  ought  to  be 
granted,  and  I  want  to  oblige  everybody  when  I  can  ;  and 
Stanton  and  I  have  an  understanding  that  if  I  send 
an  order  to  him  that  cannot  be  consistently  granted,  he  is 
to  refuse  it,  which  he  sometimes  does.  And  that  led  to 
a  remark  which  I  made  the  other  day  to  a  man  who  com- 
plained of  Stanton,  that  I  had  n't  much  influence  with  this 
administration,  but  expected  to  have  more  with  the  next."  " 

This  explanation  accounts,  too,  for  much,  if  not  all, 
of  Secretary  Stanton's  seeming  insubordination,  in  the 
instances  that  follow. 

If  an  applicant  for  military  favors  went,  at  the  outset, 
to  the  White  House,  rather  than  to  the  War  Office,  he 
may  have  received  from  the  President  a  penciled  request 
in  his  behalf,  addressed  to  Secretary  Stanton.  Sometimes 
this  was  granted,  but  it  was  as  often  curtly  or  angrily 
refused.  Occasionally  passes  signed  by  Mr.  Lincoln  were 
confiscated  by  order  of  the  War  Department,  upon  pre- 
sentation ;  and,  in  certain  instances,  even  more  formal 
documents  were  not  safe  against  the  Secretary's  destruc- 
tive fingers.  This  fact,  one  enterprising  trader  learned 


234       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

to  his  disappointment.  He  had  pursued  the  President,  in 
season  and  out,  for  a  pass  through  the  lines  and  a  trea- 
sury license  to  buy  cotton.  How  persistent  he  was  may 
be  inferred  from  Mr.  Lincoln's  complaint  of  his  class,  in 
general :  — 

"  Few  things  are  so  troublesome  to  the  government  as 
the  fierceness  with  which  the  profits  in  trading  are  sought." 

This  particular  trader  must  have  brought  more  than 
fierceness  to  bear  upon  the  harassed  President,  for  he 
finally  received  the  coveted  permit. 

"  You  will  have  to  take  it  over  to  Stanton  for  counter- 
signing," said  Mr.  Lincoln. 

The  happy  man,  hastening  to  the  War  Department, 
handed  the  document  to  the  Secretary.  Mr.  Stan  tor., 
taking  advantage  of  military  conditions  that  warranted  a 
refusal,  showed  his  deep-seated  contempt  for  speculators 
by  tearing  the  paper  into  shreds  and  stamping  upon  them. 
Our  trader  returned  to  the  President  in  a  rage,  and  told 
him  what  had  occurred.  Mr.  Lincoln,  feigning  surprise, 
asked  him  to  describe  exactly  how  the  Secretary  had 
acted.  Then,  after  a  moment's  pause,  he  said  :  — 

"  You  go  back  and  tell  Stanton  that  I  will  tear  up  a 
dozen  of  his  papers  before  Saturday  night."  18 

The  Secretary  of  War  made  the  most  of  the  discretion 
reposed  in  him.  He  insulted  Congressmen  and  bullied 
traders,  impartially,  when  they  brought  orders  of  which 
he  could  safely  disapprove.  Indeed, — if  an  anecdote  to 
which  the  Hon.  George  W.  Julian  has  given  currency 
may  be  relied  on,  —  he  did  not,  in  his  fits  of  anger,  spare 
the  President  himself.  This  story  illustrates,  better  than 
any  other,  the  popular  war-time  impression  concerning 
the  relations  between  the  two  men.  For  that,  if  for  no  other 
reason,  it  should  be  taken  into  an  account  which  seeks 
to  explain  the  origin  of  the  belief  that  Mr.  Stanton  was 
master.  A  committee  of  western  men,  we  are  told,  headed 
by  Congressman  Owen  Lovejoy  of  Illinois,  called  on  the 
President  to  urge  that  the  spirit  of  national  unity  might 


THE  CURBING   OF  ST ANTON     235 

be  promoted  in  the  army  by  the  mingling  of  eastern 
and  western  troops.  The  plan,  on  its  apparent  merits,  as 
well  as  because  it  was  presented  by  a  warm  personal  and 
political  friend,  interested  Mr.  Lincoln,  who  wrote  a  note 
to  the  Secretary  of  War,  suggesting  a  transfer  of  some  of 
the  regiments.  As  the  scheme  seemed  impracticable  to 
Mr.  Stanton,  he  refused  to  carry  it  out. 

"  But  we  have  the  President's  order,  sir,"  said  Mr. 
Lovejoy. 

"  Did  Lincoln  give  you  an  order  of  that  kind  ?  "  asked 
the  Secretary. 

"  He  did,  sir." 

"  Then  he  is  a  damned  fool  I "  was  the  response. 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  the  President  is  a  damned  fool?" 
asked  the  Congressman  in  amazement. 

"  Yes,  sir,  if  he  gave  you  such  an  order  as  that." 

Returning  to  the  Executive  Mansion,  Mr.  Lovejoy 
reported  the  result  of  the  conference. 

"Did  Stanton  say  I  was  a  damned  fool?"  asked  Mr. 
Lincoln,  at  the  close  of  the  recital. 

"  He  did,  sir ;  and  repeated  it." 

"If  Stanton  said  I  was  a  damned  fool,"  concluded 
the  President  thoughtfully,  "  then  I  must  be  one ;  for  he 
is  nearly  always  right,  and  generally  says  what  he  means. 
I  will  step  over  and  see  him."  19 

Nor  was  this  the  only  occasion  on  which  Messrs. 
Julian  and  Lovejoy  had  reason  to  infer  that  the  man 
in  the  War  Office  dominated  the  man  in  the  White 
House.  They  called  on  the  President  at  another  time  to 
urge  a  certain  army  appointment  for  the  son  of  a  man 
who  had  befriended  Lincoln  in  the  days  of  his  poverty. 
The  President  promptly  endorsed  the  application  and 
sent  them  with  it  to  Mr.  Stanton,  who  as  promptly  said, 
"No." 

"  Let  us  give  his  qualifications,"  suggested  one  of  the 
Congressmen. 

"  I  do  not  wish  to  hear  them,"  was  the  reply.   "  The 


236      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

position  is  of  high  importance.  I  have  in  mind  a  man  of 
suitable  experience  and  capacity  to  fill  it." 

When  the  callers,  still  persisting,  reminded  the  Secre- 
tary that  the  President  wished  their  man  to  be  appointed, 
he  retorted :  — 

"  I  do  not  care  what  the  President  wants  ;  the  country 
wants  the  very  best  it  can  get.  I  am  serving  the  coun- 
try regardless  of  individuals." 

Returning  to  the  White  House,  the  Congressmen  re- 
ported their  failure,  but  Mr.  Lincoln  gave  them  no 
comfort. 

"  Gentlemen,"  he  said,  "  it  is  my  duty  to  submit.  I  can- 
not add  to  Mr.  Stanton's  troubles.  His  position  is  one  of 
the  most  difficult  in  the  world.  Thousands  in  the  army 
blame  him  because  they  are  not  promoted,  and  other 
thousands  out  of  the  army  blame  him  because  they  are 
not  appointed.  The  pressure  upon  him  is  immeasurable 
and  unending.  He  is  the  rock  on  the  beach  of  our  national 
ocean  against  which  the  breakers  dash  and  roar,  dash  and 
roar,  without  ceasing.  He  fights  back  the  angry  waters 
and  prevents  them  from  undermining  and  overwhelming 
the  land.  Gentlemen,  I  do  not  see  how  he  survives, — 
why  he  is  not  crushed  and  torn  to  pieces.  Without  him  I 
should  be  destroyed.  He  performs  his  task  superhumanly. 
Now  do  not  mind  this  matter,  for  Mr.  Stanton  is  right 
and  I  cannot  wrongly  interfere  with  him."  m 

Taking  advantage  of  this  purely  impersonal  attitude 
of  the  President,  his  war  minister  did  not  hesitate,  when 
the  circumstances  warranted,  to  oppose  what  Mr.  Lincoln 
wanted  for  old  friends  as  stubbornly  as  he  planted  himself 
in  the  path  of  political  favorites.  A  case  in  point  grew 
out  of  the  so-called  Coles  County  riot.21  Some  southern 
sympathizers,  living  near  Charleston,  111.,  had  brought 
about  a  quarrel,  at  that  place,  with  a  party  of  Federal 
soldiers  home  on  furlough.  In  the  shooting  that  ensued, 
eleven  officers  and  privates  had  been  killed  or  wounded. 
Whereupon  the  military  authorities,  having  arrested  a 


THE   CURBING   OF   STANTON     237 

number  of  the  rioters,  had  held  fifteen  of  them  prisoners, 
in  Fort  Delaware.    Their  release  had,  from  time  to  time, 
been  sought  by  influential  Illinoisans,  but  without  success. 
At  last,  it  occurred  to  the  friends  of  the  prisoners  that 
what  the  politicians  had  failed  to  accomplish  might  be 
arrived  at  through  the  instrumentality  of  Mr.  Lincoln's 
cousin  and  one-time  playmate,  Dennis  Hanks.    So  behold 
Dennis,  in  a  new  suit  of  store  clothes,  presenting  himself 
at  the  Executive  Mansion,  on  what  might  be  called  a 
diplomatic  mission.   He  was  affectionately  received  by  the 
President,  who  gravely  handed  him  the  official  record  in 
the  Riot  Cases  to  read.    Then,  as  if  to  continue  the  joke, 
Mr.  Lincoln  sent  him  to  confer  on  the  subject  with  the 
head  of  the  War  Department.  Luckily  for  cousin  Dennis, 
the  choleric  Stanton  was  not  to  be  found.   That  officer 
came  to  the  White  House  presently,  however,  for  a  dis- 
cussion in  which  President,  Secretary,  and  citizen  Hanks 
took  part.    Adopting  the  garrulous  petitioner's  own  ver- 
sion,   Mr.  Stanton    pointed    out   how   heinous    were   the 
crimes  of  the  rioters,  and  declared  that  "every  damned 
one  of  them  should  be  hung."   Even  Mr.  Lincoln's  query, 
"If   these   men  should  return  home  and   become  good 
citizens,  who  would  be  hurt?"  failed  to  move  the  Secretary 
from  his  position  that  the  prisoners  ought  to  be  severely 
punished.    This  opinion  the  President  declined,  at  the 
time,  to  overrule.    So  Dennis's  errand  came  to  an  inglo- 
rious close.    He  soon  returned  home,  where  his  visit  to 
the  President  was,  ever  afterward,  drawn  upon  for  stories 
that  were  not  always  consistent  with  one  another.    The 
envoy,  of  course,  carried   away  an  unfavorable  impres- 
sion  of  Mr.  Stanton,  whom   he  described  as  a  "frisky 
little  Yankee,  ...  in  a  spike-tailed  coat."  After  the  great 
conference,  when  the  Secretary  had  left  the  room,  Dennis 
said,  as  he  relates :  — 

"  Abe,  if  I 's  as  big  as  you,  I  would  take  that  little 
feller  over  my  knee  and  spank  him." 

To  which  Mr.  Lincoln  rejoined,  with  a  laugh,  that  he 


23  8       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

guessed  Stanton  was  a  bigger  man  than  he,  in  some 
respects. 

"  I  asked  Abe,"  recalled  Dennis,  on  another  occasion, 
"why  he  didn't  kick  him  out.  I  told  him  he  was  too 
fresh  altogether." 

And  the  President  is  said  to  have  replied :  — 

"If  I  did,  Dennis,  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  anothei" 
jian  to  fill  his  place."  22 

Nevertheless,  in  the  sequel  to  this  episode,  Mr.  Stan- 
ton's  domination  was  found,  after  all,  to  be  apparent 
rather  than  real.  He  demanded  —  not  without  reason  — 
that  the  rioters  should  have  short  shrift  before  a  military 
court ;  but  to  this  the  President  would  not  consent.  After 
carefully  examining  the  evidence,  Mr.  Lincoln  directed 
the  prisoners  to  be  returned  to  Coles  County,  where  those 
of  them  who  had  been  indicted  were  to  be  surrendered  to 
the  civil  authorities,  and  the  rest  were  to  be  discharged. 
The  required  order,  it  is  perhaps  needless  to  say,  was 
promptly  issued  by  the  Secretary  of  War. 

All  of  Mr.  Stanton's  arrests  were  not  so  defensible 
as  the  Charleston  ones.  Indeed,  it  became  necessary,  at 
times,  to  interpose  between  him  and  the  objects  of  his 
severity.  How  to  secure  these  unfortunates  substantial 
justice,  without  impairing  the  Secretary's  authority,  or 
perhaps  losing  his  services  entirely,  tried  the  President's 
good-humored  tact  to  the  utmost.  Such  a  problem  pre- 
sented itself  during  the  presidential  canvass  of  1864. 
The  votes  of  the  Pennsylvania  troops  were,  in  conform- 
ity with  an  act  of  legislature,  to  be  cast  in  the  field, 
under  the  eyes  of  State  commissioners.  That  some  of 
these  officers  should  be  Democrats,  if  the  election  were  to 
have  even  a  semblance  of  fairness,  was  obvious ;  but  for 
reasons  which  were  equally  clear,  prominent  members  of 
the  minority  party  could  with  difficulty  be  prevailed  upon 
to  accept  the  appointments.  At  this  juncture,  Governor 
Curtin  got  Colonel  A.  K.  McClure  to  help  him  complete 
the  list.  The  Colonel  applied,  among  others,  to  Jere 


THE   CURBING   OF   ST ANTON     239 

McKibbin,  who,  at  the  suggestion  that  he  visit  the  army 
as  a  commissioner,  instantly  said  :  — 

"  Why,  Stanton  would  put  me  in  Old  Capitol  Prison 
before  I  was  there  a  day.  He  hates  our  family  for  no 
other  reason  that  I  know  of  than  that  my  father  was  one 
of  his  best  friends  in  Pittsburg,  when  he  needed  a  friend." 

McClure  assured  him  that  the  Secretary  of  War  would 
not  attempt  any  violence  against  a  man  who  held  Governor 
Curtin's  commission.  Yet  it  was  only  after  the  Colonel 
had  pledged  himself  to  protect  McKibbin,  if  he  got  into 
any  difficulty,  that  the  latter  consented  to  serve.  He  duly 
left  Philadelphia  for  the  front,  with  the  other  commis- 
sioners. They  had  not  been  gone  two  days,  when  McClure 
received  from  McKibbin  a  Washington  despatch  which 
read :  — 

"  Stanton  has  me  in  Old  Capitol  Prison.  Come  at  once." 

The  Colonel  hastened  to  make  good  his  promise.  Arriv- 
ing at  the  Capital  late  in  the  night  of  that  same  day,  he 
obtained  an  immediate  interview  with  the  President.  Mr. 
Lincoln  knew  of  Stanton's  grudge  against  the  McKibbins. 
He  had  encountered  it  on  several  previous  occasions,  when 
Jere's  brothers,  who  were  officers  in  the  army,  would  have 
lost  well-merited  promotions  but  for  the  President's  inter- 
position. It  was  not  surprising,  therefore,  to  find  this  last 
act  of  enmity,  as  a  glance  at  the  papers  revealed,  utterly 
without  justification.  A  "stupid  blunder,"  was  Mr.  Lin- 
coln's comment.  He  appeared  to  be  greatly  distressed 
over  the  affair,  and  proposed  to  release  McKibbin  at  once 
on  his  parole.  This  did  not  satisfy  the  Colonel,  who  urged 
that  the  commissioner  should  be  discharged.  But  the 
President  replied :  — 

"  It  seems  hardly  fair  to  discharge  McKibbin  uncon- 
ditionally without  permitting  Stanton  to  give  his  expla- 
nation. You  know,  McClure,  McKibbin  is  safe,  parole 
or  no  parole,  so  go  and  get  him  out  of  prison." 

With  this  the  Colonel  had,  for  the  time,  to  be  content. 
He  prevailed  upon  Mr.  Lincoln,  however,  to  appoint  an 


240      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

hour  the  following  morning,  at  which  they  might  meet 
the  Secretary  of  War  to  have  the  parole  discharged. 
Then  hurrying  to  the  Old  Capitol  Prison,  with  the  Presi- 
dent's order,  he  had  the  commissioner  released.  On  the 
next  day,  at  the  time  agreed  upon,  Colonel  McClure  sat 
in  the  President's  room,  awaiting  Mr.  Stanton.  The  Sec- 
retary entered,  pale  with  anger. 

"  Well,  McClure,"  he  exclaimed,  "  what  damned  rebel 
are  you  here  to  get  out  of  trouble,  this  morning?" 

"  Your  arrest  of  McKibbin,"  replied  the  Colonel,  "  was 
a  cowardly  act.  You  knew  McKibbin  was  guiltless  of 
any  offence,  and  you  did  it  to  gratify  a  brutal  hatred." 

The  Pennsylvanian,  having  given  further  vent  to  his 
indignation  in  terms  no  less  severe,  demanded  a  final  dis- 
charge of  the  prisoner.  To  this,  Mr.  Stanton,  who  had 
been  excitedly  walking  the  floor,  answered,  in  his  most 
offensive  manner :  — 

"  I  decline  to  discharge  McKibbin  from  his  parole.  You 
can  make  formal  application  for  it  if  you  choose ;  and  I 
will  consider  and  decide  it." 

"  I  don't  know  what  McKibbin  will  do,"  hotly  rejoined 
McClure,  "  but  if  I  were  Jere  McKibbin,  as  sure  as  there 
is  a  God,  I  would  crop  your  ears  before  I  left  Washing- 
ton." 

Mr.  Stanton  made  no  reply.  He  abruptly  turned  and 
left  the  room.  Whereupon  the  President,  who  had  been 
a  silent  auditor,  said,  in  his  jocular  way :  — 

"  Well,  McClure,  you  did  n't  get  on  very  far  with  Stan- 
ton,  did  you  ?  But  he  '11  come  all  right.  Let  the  matter 
rest." 

A  formal  request,  however,  for  the  discharge  of  the 
parole  was  sent,  at  once,  to  the  Secretary  of  War,  who  as 
formally  replied,  in  an  autograph  letter,  that  the  applica- 
tion, having  been  duly  considered,  "  could  not  be  granted 
consistently  with  the  interests  of  the  public  service."  Mr. 
McKibbin  outlived  Mr.  Stanton,  yet  he  died  a  prisoner 
on  parole.23 


THE   CURBING   OF   STANTON     241 

Mr.  Lincoln  made  no  secret  of  his  anxiety  to  avoid 
conflicting  with  his  irascible  Secretary,  whose  objection 
to  a  measure  was,  at  times,  frankly  assigned  as  a  sufficient 
reason  for  its  rejection.  This  was  the  case  when  Major- 
General  Nathaniel  P.  Banks,  commanding  the  Department 
of  the  Gulf,  sought  to  extend  his  authority  by  having  that 
of  his  division  commander,  Major-General  E.  R.  S.  Canby, 
curtailed.  The  latter  officer  had  been  appointed  to  the 
Military  Division  of  West  Mississippi,  constructed  out 
of  the  departments  of  Arkansas  and  the  Gulf,  in  the 
spring  of  1864,  directly  after  Banks's  unsuccessful  Red 
River  campaign.  General  Banks  chafed  under  the  arrange- 
ment. But  his  administrative  abilities  were  held  in  such 
high  esteem  by  the  President  that  several  expedients  were 
tried  for  keeping  him  contentedly  at  his  post,  where  he 
was  expected  to  play  an  important  part  in  reorganizing  the 
Louisiana  state  government.  As  he  persisted,  however,  in 
his  appeals  to  be  relieved  of  Canby's  authority,  Mr.  Lin- 
coln finally  dismissed  the  matter,  with  a  refusal  which 
read  in  part :  — 

"  I  know  you  are  dissatisfied,  which  pains  me  very 
much  ;  but  I  wish  not  to  be  argued  with  further.  I  enter- 
tain no  abatement  of  confidence  or  friendship  for  you.  I 
have  told  you  why  I  cannot  order  General  Canby  from 
the  Department  of  the  Gulf  —  that  he  whom  I  must  hold 
responsible  for  military  results  is  not  agreed."24 

And  with  this  Banks  had  to  rest  content. 

On  several  of  the  numerous  occasions  when  the  Presi- 
dent found  it  necessary  to  thwart  Mr.  Stanton's  wishes, 
he  did  so  in  a  way  which  tended  to  confirm,  rather  than 
to  remove,  the  impression  that  the  Secretary  controlled 
him.  An  instance  of  this  is  preserved  in  another  letter 
—  one  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  characteristic  pleas  for  mercy. 
His  oft-mentioned  clemency  was  not  limited  to  northern 
offenders.  He  could  not  bring  himself  to  regard  the  sol- 
diers of  the  Confederacy  with  the  bitterness  evinced  by 
his  Secretary  of  War,  whose  uncompromising  hostility 


242       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

toward  those  who  had  taken  up  arms  against  the  Union 
had  repeatedly  opposed  itself  to  the  President's  desire 
that  certain  penitent  prisoners  should  be  set  free.  This 
wish  was  finally  embodied  in  the  following  communication 
to  Mr.  Stanton  :  — 

"  I  am  so  pressed  in  regard  to  prisoners  of  war  in  our 
custody,  whose  homes  are  within  our  lines,  and  who  wish 
to  not  be  exchanged,  but  to  take  the  oath  and  be  dis- 
charged, that  I  hope  you  will  pardon  me  for  again  calling 
up  the  subject.  My  impression  is  that  we  will  not  ever 
force  the  exchange  of  any  of  this  class ;  that,  taking  the 
oath  and  being  discharged,  none  of  them  will  again  go  to 
the  rebellion ;  but  the  rebellion  again  coming  to  them, 
a  considerable  percentage  of  them,  probably  not  a  major- 
ity, would  rejoin  it ;  that,  by  a  cautious  discrimination, 
the  number  so  discharged  would  not  be  large  enough  to 
do  any  considerable  mischief  in  any  event,  will  relieve 
distress  in  at  least  some  meritorious  cases,  and  would 
give  me  some  relief  from  an  intolerable  pressure.  I  shall 
be  glad,  therefore,  to  have  your  cheerful  assent  to  the 
discharge  of  those  whose  names  I  may  send,  which  I 
will  only  do  with  circumspection."25 

This  tactful  presentation  of  the  matter  accomplished  as 
much  as  would  have  resulted  from  a  positive  mandate. 
The  Secretary  responded  :  — 

"  Mr.  President :  Your  order  for  the  discharge  of  any 
prisoners  of  war  will  be  cheerfully  and  promptly  obeyed."26 

Another  illustration  of  how  Mr.  Lincoln,  to  use  one  of 
his  own  phrases,  "  plowed  around  "  this  sometimes  ob- 
structive minister  is  supplied  by  John  Adams  Kasson, 
who  represented  an  Iowa  district  in  Congress  during  the 
latter  half  of  the  war.  His  constituents  desired  him  to 
procure  promotion  for  the  gallant  Colonel  James  A.  Wil- 
liamson, commanding  the  Fourth  Infantry  Regiment  of 
that  State.  The  officer  deserved  the  higher  rank,  but  it 
was  difficult  of  attainment.  Letters  and  petitions  poured 
in  upon  Mr.  Kasson.  He  was  given  to  understand  that 


THE   CURBING   OF   STANTON     243 

his  failure  to  obtain  the  promotion  might  cost  him  his 
reelection.  The  case  was  laid  before  the  President,  who 
valued  this  particular  Congressman  both  as  a  personal 
friend  and  as  one  of  the  administration's  most  zealous 
supporters.  It  would  not  do  to  lose  him  for  a  brigadier's 
commission.  Accordingly,  at  the  first  Iowa  resignation  of 
the  rank  desired,  Mr.  Lincoln  signed  an  order  upon  Sec- 
retary Stanton  to  make  the  favorite  colonel  a  brigadier- 
general.  Pleased  with  his  success,  Mr.  Kasson  presented 
himself,  with  the  order,  at  the  War  Department.  He  did 
not  realize  what  difficulties  were  still  in  his  way,  or  how 
fiercely  the  Cerberus  at  the  portals  to  military  prefer- 
ment resented  the  intrusion  of  civilians.  What  followed 
is  best  told  in  Mr.  Kasson's  own  language. 

"  Mr.  Stanton,"  he  says  in  his  Reminiscences,27  "  was 
seated  on  the  sofa,  talking  with  a  friend,  and  his  immedi- 
ate clerk  was  standing  at  a  neighboring  desk,  with  his  pen 
in  hand.  As  I  advanced,  taking  off  my  hat,  Mr.  Stanton 
turned  to  me  to  hear  what  I  had  to  say.  I  told  hi«i  my 
errand,  and  handed  him  the  President's  order.  He  glanced 
at  it,  and  said,  in  an  angry  tone,  '  I  shan't  do  it,  sir ; 
I  shan't  do  it !  '  and  passed  the  paper  up  to  his  clerk. 
Utterly  amazed  at  his  words,  and  indignant  at  his  tone, 
I  inquired  why  he  refused  to  obey  the  President's  order. 
*  It  is  n't  the  way  to  do  it,  sir,  and  I  shan't  do  it.'  I  was 
going  on  to  speak  of  the  merits  of  the  officer,  and  of  the 
proceeding,  my  wrath  rising,  when  he  cut  me  off  with 
'  I  don't  propose  to  argue  the  question  with  you,  sir ;  I 
shan't  do  it.'  Utterly  indignant,  I  turned  to  the  clerk 
and  asked  to  withdraw  the  paper.  '  Don't  you  let  him 
have  it,  sir,'  said  Stanton ;  *  don't  let  him  have  it.'  The 
clerk,  whose  hands  were  trembling  like  an  Eastern  slave 
before  his  Pasha,  withdrew  the  document  which  he  was 
in  the  act  of  giving  to  me.  I  felt  my  indignation  getting 
too  strong  for  me,  and  putting  on  my  hat  and  turning  my 
back  to  the  Secretary,  I  slowly  went  to  the  door,  with  set 
teeth,  saying  to  myself,  '  As  you  will  not  hear  me  in  your 


LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

own  forum,  you  shall  hear  from  me  in  mine.'  A  few  days 
later,  after  recovering  my  coolness,  I  reported  the  affair 
to  the  President.  A  look  of  vexation  came  over  his  face, 
and  he  seemed  unwilling  then  to  talk  of  it,  and  desired 
me  to  see  him  another  day.  I  did  so,  when  he  gave  me 
a  positive  order  for  the  promotion  of  the  colonel  to  be  a 
brigadier,  and  told  me  to  take  it  over  to  the  War  Depart- 
ment. I  replied  that  I  could  not  speak  again  with  Mr. 
Stanton  till  lie  apologized  for  his  insulting  manner  to 
me  on  the  previous  occasion.  '  Oh,'  said  the  President, 
4  Stanton  has  gone  to  Fortress  Monroe,  and  Dana  is 
acting.  He  will  attend  to  it  for  you.'  This  he  said  with 
a  manner  of  relief,  as  if  it  was  a  piece  of  good  luck  to 
find  a  man  there  who  would  obey  his  orders.  The  nomi- 
nation was  sent  to  the  Senate  and  confirmed." 

Soon  after  this  occurrence,  when  the  House  was  debat- 
ing a  motion  concerning  the  investigation  of  the  Old  Cap- 
itol and  the  Carroll  prisons,  Mr.  Kasson  carried  out  his 
threat.28  Describing  what  he  termed  Secretary  Stanton's 
"  arbitrary  habit  of  mind,"  he  denounced  this  war-lord 
for  his  tyrannical  course  and  his  disobedience  toward  his 
chief.  To  substantiate  the  latter  accusation,  the  speaker 
related  to  an  attentive  audience  his  own  experience  with 
Mr.  Stanton.  The  story  not  only  helped  to  swell  the  over- 
whelming vote  in  favor  of  the  resolution,  but  it  also  gave 
the  widest  publicity  to  what  was  considered  an  authorita- 
tive insight  into  the  peculiar  relations  existing  between 
Mr.  Lincoln  and  the  head  of  the  War  Department. 

There  is  at  least  one  other  anecdote  of  how  the  Presi- 
dent "  plowed  around "  Stanton  to  reach  a  military  ap- 
pointment. In  this  instance,  he  had  to  encounter  not  only 
the  Secretary's  cogent  objection  to  civilian  interference  in 
such  matters,  but  that  alert  minister's  equally  sound  rule 
as  well,  against  the  transfer  of  volunteer  officers  to  the 
regular  army.  So,  when  a  number  of  prominent  public 
men  came  to  the  White  House  one  day  to  urge  such  a 
transfer  of  Captain  John  J.  S.  Hassler,  who  was  serving 


THE  CURBING   OF   STANTON     245 

with  credit  in  the  Thirty-first  New  York  Regiment,  Mr. 
Lincoln  threw  up  his  hands  in  mock  agony  and  said :  — 

"  Gentlemen,  I  can  do  nothing.  That  rests  entirely  with 
Mr.  Stanton,  but  I  can  go  over  and  join  in  a  request  to 
Mr.  Stanton  to  have  Captain  Hassler  appointed  in  the 
regular  army." 

The  Secretary  of  War  received  the  petitioners  with 
an  absolute  refusal.  Similar  requests,  it  was  explained, 
came  to  him  in  such  numbers  that  to  comply  would  result 
in  leaving  the  volunteer  regiments  almost  without  officers. 
An  ironclad  rule  had  therefore  been  made  against  such 
transfers,  and  he  declined  to  break  it  under  any  condi- 
tion. Returning  from  the  War  Office,  the  delegation  met 
Adjutant-General  Townsend,  to  whom  they  related  the 
whole  affair. 

"  I  think  I  can  fix  it  for  you,"  he  said.  "  Let  it  be 
understood  by  the  President  that  Mr.  Hassler  will  step 
across  the  street  and  enlist  as  a  private  in  the  regular 
army,  at  the  same  time  resigning  his  commission  as  an 
officer  of  volunteers.  He  can  then  at  once  be  promoted." 

When  the  plan  was  laid  before  Mr.  Lincoln,  he  smil- 
ingly assented,  but  Stanton  had  no  smile  for  the  officer 
who  shortly  brought  him  the  papers  for  Hassler's  promo- 
tion in  the  regular  army.  He  is  said  to  have  given  the 
man  "  one  of  those  through-and-through  looks  with  which 
it  was  his  habit  to  chastise  in  silence  those  who  had  done 
something  they  knew  was  not  right,"  and  then  he  signed 
the  document.29 

The  Secretary  of  War  did  not  always  hold  himself  so 
well  in  hand.  There  were  times  when  his  spleen  made 
serious  trouble,  —  when,  in  fact,  he  did  not  spare  even  his 
cabinet  colleagues.  It  was  then  that  the  President's  touch 
could  be  especially  delicate,  as  he  evinced  in  the  handling 
of  a  certain  disagreement  between  Secretary  Stanton  and 
Postmaster-General  Montgomery  Blair.  Mr.  Lincoln  set- 
tled the  question  at  issue  adversely  to  his  hot-headed  war 
minister,  yet  he  again  skilfully  avoided  a  struggle  with 


246      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

him.  The  Blair-Stan  ton  feud  was  of  long  standing.  It 
had  antedated  the  war,  and  had  caused  the  Postmaster- 
General  bitterly  to  oppose  Mr.  Stanton's  appointment  to 
a  cabinet  office.  As  they  were  both  men  of  aggressive 
temperament,  they  naturally  did  not  work  harmoniously 
when,  later,  their  department  duties  brought  them  into 
relations  with  each  other.  Several  attempts,  at  the  same 
time,  to  involve  the  President  in  the  quarrel  were  without 
avail.  "  I  learned  a  great  many  years  ago,"  he  once  said, 
referring  to  a  controversy  carried  on  by  two  prominent 
Republicans,  "that  in  a  fight  between  man  and  wife,  a 
third  party  should  never  get  between  the  woman's  skillet 
and  the  man's  ax-helve."  How  Mr.  Lincoln  managed  the 
cabinet  belligerents  was  illustrated,  during  the  summer  of 
1864,  when  Mr.  Stanton  refused  Mr.  Blair's  request  to 
issue  certain  orders  that  would  facilitate  the  postal  service 
within  the  lines  of  the  army.  The  orders  had  been 
drafted  at  headquarters,  under  General  Grant's  super- 
vision, but  he  waited  for  Secretary  Stanton's  sanction. 
As  this  was  withheld,  because  it  would  "  accommodate  Mr. 
Blair,"  an  appeal  to  the  President  followed.  After  read- 
ing the  Postmaster-General's  letter  of  complaint,  and  hav- 
ing questioned  the  bearer,  Colonel  Absalom  H.  Markland 
of  the  army  mail  service,  he  said  :  — 

"  If  I  understand  the  case,  General  Grant  wants  the 
orders  issued,  and  Blair  wants  them  issued,  and  you  want 
them  issued,  and  Stanton  won't  issue  them.  Now,  don't 
you  see  what  kind  of  a  fix  I  will  be  in  if  I  interfere  ?  I  '11 
tell  you  what  to  do.  If  you  and  General  Grant  under- 
stand one  another,  suppose  you  try  to  get  along  without 
the  orders,  and  if  Blair  or  Stanton  make  a  fuss,  I  may  be 
called  in  as  a  referee,  and  I  may  decide  in  your  favor."  M 

The  contemplated  changes  were  made  without  the 
orders,  and  nothing  further  was  heard  about  this  particu- 
lar difference. 

The  foregoing  instances  of  Secretary  Stanton's  alleged 
insubordination,  or  excessive  power  over  Lincoln,  are  the 


THE  CURBING  OF   STANTON     247 

only  ones  worthy  of  record  that  have  come  to  the  writer's 
notice.  They  are  not  all,  it  is  true,  supported  by  docu- 
mentary evidence ;  yet  the  standing  of  the  narrators,  — 
with  perhaps  one  exception, — certain  corroborative  cir- 
cumstances, and  the  entire  absence  of  conflicting  testimony 
entitle  them  to  credit.  As  much  cannot  be  said,  however, 
for  many  of  the  anecdotes  of  Mr.  Stanton's  mastery,  in 
which  the  newspaper  and  magazine  press  have  abounded. 
Now  and  then,  one  of  these  apocryphal  tales  has  found 
its  way  into  some  historical  work  of  authority,  where  it 
has  served,  more  than  its  fellows,  to  keep  alive  an  exag- 
gerated conception  of  the  Secretary's  influence  over  the 
President.  A  typical  case  is  to  be  found  in  the  Personal 
Memoirs  of  General  Grant.  He  speaks  of  Mr.  Stanton 
as  "  a  man  who  never  questioned  his  own  authority,  and 
who  always  did  in  war  time  what  he  wanted  to  do."  In 
connection  with  this  statement,  it  is  related  that  Mr.  Lin- 
coln, on  the  occasion  of  his  visit  to  the  captured  city  of 
Richmond,  issued  permission  to  "the  body,  calling  itself 
the  Legislature  of  Virginia,  to  meet  for  the  purpose  of 
recalling  the  Virginia  troops  from  the  Confederate 
armies."  The  summons  for  a  meeting  which,  according 
to  the  illustrious  author,  "immediately"  afterward  ap- 
peared in  the  local  newspapers,  "  went  very  much  further 
than  Mr.  Lincoln  had  contemplated,  as  he  did  not  say 
the  '  Legislature  of  Virginia,'  but  *  the  body  which  called 
itself  the  Legislature  of  Virginia.'  Mr.  Stanton,"  con- 
tinues Grant,  "  saw  the  call,  as  published  in  the  northern 
papers,  the  very  next  issue,  and  took  the  liberty  of  coun- 
termanding the  order  authorizing  any  meeting  of  the 
legislature,  or  any  other  body,  and  this  notwithstanding 
the  fact  that  the  President  was  nearer  the  spot  than  he 
was."31  The  story  is  incorrect.  Mr.  Lincoln  did,  on  April 
6,  1865,  while  at  City  Point  and  after  several  interviews 
with  Judge  Campbell,  the  Confederate  Assistant  Secretary 
of  War,32  write  to  Major-General  Godfrey  Weitzel,  in 
command  at  Richmond :  — 


248       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

"  It  has  been  intimated  to  me  that  the  gentlemen  who 
have  acted  as  the  Legislature  of  Virginia,  in  support  of 
the  rebellion,  may  now  desire  to  assemble  at  Richmond, 
and  take  measures  to  withdraw  the  Virginia  troops  and 
other  support  from  resistance  to  the  general  government. 
If  they  attempt  it,  give  them  permission  and  protection."33 

But  the  call  to  the  members  of  the  legislature  was 
not  published,  even  in  Richmond,  until  April  12,  three 
days  after  the  President  had  returned  to  Washington. 
He  then  found  that  Judge  Campbell  had  gone  beyond 
the  authority  conferred,  and  had  —  we  quote  Mr.  Lin- 
coln's criticism  —  assumed  the  President  to  "  have  called 
the  insurgent  Legislature  of  Virginia  together,  as  the 
rightful  legislature  of  the  State,  to  settle  all  differences 
with  the  United  States." S4  This  misconstruction  gave  the 
President  pause.  He  found  disapproval,  moreover,  within 
the  cabinet,  of  any  plan  for  reconstruction  that  even 
seemed  to  recognize  the  political  elements  of  the  Con- 
federacy. Most  strenuous  in  opposition  was  Secretary 
Stanton,  who  earnestly  advised  Mr.  Lincoln  to  revoke  the 
City  Point  instructions.  This  the  President  concluded  to 
do,  especially  as  the  recent  surrender  of  the  Virginia 
troops  to  General  Grant  had  removed  all  occasion  for  the 
meeting.  Mr.  Lincoln,  accordingly,  brought  the  incident 
to  a  close,  on  the  evening  of  April  12,  by  telegraphing  to 
General  "Weitzel,  from  the  Capital,  that  the  permission  to 
assemble  was  withdrawn.  Strange  to  say,  General  Grant, 
himself,  the  following  day,  despatched  from  Washington 
to  the  commander  at  Richmond  certain  supplementary  in- 
structions. To  this  extent  the  Lieutenant-General,  rather 
than  the  Secretary  of  War,  figures  officially  in  the  corre- 
spondence.35 So  far  from  countermanding  the  President's 
orders  was  Mr.  Stanton,  that  none  of  the  messages  con- 
cerning the  Virginia  legislature  even  went  through  the 
customary  form  of  carrying  his  signature.38 

The  Secretary  of  War  never  successfully  opposed  his 
will  to  that  of  the  President  in  any  matter  concerning 


THE   CURBING   OF   STANTON     249 

which  his  chief  had  reached  a  definite  purpose.  Yet  Mr. 
Lincoln  made  no  display  of  his  authority.  He  even,  as 
we  have  seen,  turned  it  over  at  times  to  Mr.  Stanton ;  or, 
anxious  to  avoid  a  conflict,  exercised  it  with  all  the  deli- 
cacy of  which  he  was  capable.  Few,  if  any,  of  the  world's 
great  captains  could  have  managed  this  truculent  lieuten- 
ant with  so  little  friction.  To  that  end,  concession,  per- 
suasion, and  diplomacy  were  freely  intermingled.  When 
they  failed,  however,  the  President  asserted  his  mastery 
with  a  vigor  before  which  the  Secretary's  passion  and 
obstinacy  had  to  give  way. 

This  was  the  case  in  the  autumn  of  1864,  after  com- 
pulsory military  service  had  been  introduced.  To  fill 
their  quotas,  without  drawing  too  heavily  on  their  own 
citizens,  some  communities  voted  liberal  bounties,  by 
means  of  which  their  agents  obtained  recruits  wherever 
they  could  be  found.  One  of  these  agents,  Colonel  Huide- 
koper,  representing  a  Pennsylvania  district,  evolved  a 
crafty  scheme.  Learning  that  some  Confederate  prisoners 
at  Rock  Island,  111.,  were  about  to  be  released  and  en- 
listed for  our  frontier  service,  he  secured  permission  from 
Mr.  Lincoln  to  pay  them  bounties  so  that  they  might 
be  credited  to  his  county.37  When  Huidekoper  presented 
the  President's  order  for  the  credits  at  the  War  Depart- 
ment, Mr.  Stanton  refused  to  obey  it.  Indignant  and 
disappointed,  the  Colonel  reported  this  to  Mr.  Lincoln, 
who  repeated  the  order,  but  without  effect.  Then  the 
President,  himself,  visited  the  War  Department,  and  the 
Secretary  called  in  his  Provost-Marshal-General,  James 
B.  Fry,  to  state  the  facts. 

"  I  reported  to  the  two  high  officials,"  says  General  Fry, 
who  relates  the  incident,  "  as  I  had  previously  done  to  the 
Secretary  alone,  that  these  men  already  belonged  to  the 
United  States,  being  prisoners  of  war  ;  that  they  could 
not  be  used  against  the  Confederates ;  that  they  had  no 
relation  whatever  to  the  county  to  which  it  was  proposed 
they  should  be  credited ;  that  all  that  was  necessary 


250      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

toward  enlisting  them  in  our  army  for  Indian  service  was 
the  government's  release  of  them  as  prisoners  of  war ; 
that  to  give  them  bounty  and  credit  them  to  a  county 
which  owed  some  of  its  own  men  for  service  against  the 
Confederates  would  waste  money  and  deprive  the  army, 
operating  against  a  powerful  enemy,  of  that  number  of 
men,  etc." 

"  Now,  Mr.  President,"  added  Stanton,  "  those  are  the 
facts,  and  you  must  see  that  your  order  cannot  be  exe- 
cuted." 

Mr.  Lincoln,  who  had  sat  attentively  listening,  with  his 
legs  crossed,  said,  in  a  somewhat  positive  tone  :  — 

"  Mr.  Secretary,  I  reckon  you  '11  have  to  execute  the 
order." 

Stanton  replied  with  asperity :  — 

"  Mr.  President,  I  cannot  do  it.  The  order  is  an  im- 
proper one,  and  I  cannot  execute  it." 

Mr.  Lincoln,  eyeing  Stanton  fixedly,  rejoined  with  an 
emphasis  that  clearly  showed  his  determination  :  — 

"  Mr.  Secretary,  it  will  have  to  be  done." 

"  Stanton,"  concludes  Mr.  Fry,  "  then  realized  that  he 
was  overmatched.  He  had  made  a  square  issue  with  the 
President  and  been  defeated,  notwithstanding  the  fact 
that  he  was  in  the  right.  Upon  an  intimation  from  him 
I  withdrew,  and  did  not  witness  his  surrender.  A  few 
minutes  after  I  reached  my  office,  I  received  instructions 
from  the  Secretary  to  carry  out  the  President's  order."  * 

Here  was  a  bitter  leek  for  Mr.  Stanton  to  eat,  the 
more  so  because  he  had  such  good  ground  for  his  opposi- 
tion. Indeed,  not  many  days  thereafter,  Mr.  Lincoln 
admitted  to  General  Grant  that  the  entire  proceeding  had 
been  a  blunder.  Taking  all  the  blame  upon  himself,  in 
his  own  frank  way,  he  especially  exculpated  the  Secretary 
of  War,  and  explained  that  before  Mr.  Stanton  could 
convince  him  of  his  error,  he  had  committed  himself  too 
far  to  recede.39 

In  determining  the  proportion  of  troops  to  be  furnished 


THE   CURBING   OF   STANTON     251 

by  each  of  the  States,  the  War  Department  aroused  con- 
siderable faultfinding.  To  all  the  complaints,  whether  jus- 
tifiable or  not,  the  brusque  Secretary  turned  a  deaf  ear. 
He  rigidly  adhered  to  the  assignment  for  New  York, 
under  the  call  of  December  19,  1864,  although  Reuben 
E.  Fenton,  the  newly  installed  Republican  Governor  of 
the  State,  went  to  Washington  in  person,  to  point  out  its 
inaccuracies.  Failing  to  secure  a  reduction,  Mr.  Fenton 
appealed  to  the  President,  who,  having  listened  to  his 
argument,  said  :  — 

"  I  guess  you  have  the  best  of  it,  and  I  must  advise 
Stanton  and  Fry  to  ease  up  a  little." 

Then  Mr.  Lincoln  wrote  to  the  Secretary  of  War,  on 
one  of  his  little  cards  :  — 

"The  Governor  has  a  pretty  good  case.  I  feel  sure 
he  is  more  than  half  right.  We  don't  want  him  to  feel 
cross  and  we  in  the  wrong.  Try  and  fix  it  with  him." 

The  War  Department  did  "  fix  it,"  by  a  reduction 
of  nine  thousand  from  the  number  of  men  that  had  ori- 
ginally been  required.40 

The  President's  attitude  toward  Mr.  Stanton  on  these 
occasions  was  supplemented,  in  comparatively  trivial  af- 
fairs, by  an  equally  firm  bearing.  One  instance  of  this, 
at  least,  should  be  cited.  It  indicates  that  Mr.  Lincoln, 
notwithstanding  his  habitual  disregard  of  ceremony,  did 
not  brook  disrespectful  treatment  in  an  official  matter,  at 
the  Secretary's  hands.  The  head  of  the  War  Department, 
in  the  spring  of  1862,  sent  to  the  Executive  Mansion 
Edward  Stanley's  commission  as  Militaiy  Governor  of 
North  Carolina,  with  the  request  that  the  President  should 
sign  and  return  it.  The  document  was  sent  back,  but 
without  the  signature.  Another  attempt  to  have  the  com- 
mission completed  met  with  the  same  fate.  Then  Mr. 
Stanton  placed  the  scroll  in  the  hands  of  Major  William 
G.  Moore,  his  private  secretary,  with  instructions  to  call 
on  Mr.  Lincoln  and  ascertain  whether  he  had  any  objec- 
tions to  signing  it.  When  the  document  was  presented 


252       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

by  Major  Moore,  the  President  unrolled  it  and  turned 
it  about  as  if  in  search  of  something. 

"  Did  Mr.  Stauton  say  where  I  was  to  put  my  signa- 
ture?" he  asked. 

"No,  sir,"  answered  the  messenger. 

"  Can  you  tell  me,"  continued  Mr.  Lincoln,  striking 
the  commission  two  or  three  times  with  his  forefinger, 
"  whereabouts  on  this  paper  I  am  to  put  my  signature  ?  " 

Major  Moore  had  not  read  the  document.  He  now 
looked,  and  saw  Mr.  Stanton's  name  written  in  a  bold 
hand  directly  below  the  body  of  the  instrument,  with  the 
Adjutant-General's  counter-signature  to  the  left.  He  also 
saw,  beneath  the  name  of  the  Secretary,  sufficient  space 
for  another  signature ;  but  he  was  a  discreet  young  man, 
so  he  replied  :  — 

"  I  don't  see  any  place  provided  for  your  signature, 
Mr.  President." 

Then  he  sought  to  explain  the  omission.  Interrupting 
him,  Mr.  Lincoln  said  :  — 

"  Take  the  paper  back  to  the  Secretary  of  War,  with 
my  compliments,  and  say  that  the  President  will  promptly 
sign  any  proper  commission  that  may  be  sent  to  him  for 
Governor  Stanley  or  anybody  else." 

Hastening  back  to  the  War  Department,  Major  Moore 
reported  to  his  chief  what  had  occurred.  Mr.  Stanton, 
as  his  secretary  relates,  showed  considerable  feeling  over 
the  matter.  Ringing  violently  for  the  Adjutant-General, 
he  directed  him  upon  his  appearance  to  draft  another 
copy  as  quickly  as  possible.  When  this  order  had  been 
obeyed,  the  commission  made  its  fourth  journey  to  the 
White  House,  whence  it  soon  returned  with  the  desired 
signature.41 

In  this  episode  President  and  Secretary  appear,  as  far 
as  habits  go,  to  have  exchanged  places.  For  the  volcanic 
Stanton  —  paradoxical  though  it  may  seem  —  had  ideals 
of  regularity,  while  Lincoln,  who  was  deliberation  itself, 
did  not  hesitate  to  sever  red  tape,  if  it  lay  across  his 


THE   CURBING   OF   STANTON     253 

path  to  a  legitimate  end.  Occasionally  these  short-cuts 
led  through  the  War  Department,  much  to  the  annoyance 
of  the  man  at  its  head.  In  fact,  his  stern  adherence  to 
established  rules,  and  the  President's  proneness  to  set 
them  aside,  led  to  several  sharp  disagreements.  On  ques- 
tions of  mercy  —  at  times,  even  of  justice  —  their  points 
of  view  were  not  in  the  same  plane.  With  Lincoln's 
broad  humanity,  Mars,  as  he  playfully  called  his  war  min- 
ister, had  but  little  sympathy.  The  Secretary  insisted  — 
not  without  reason  —  that  military  discipline  was  endan- 
gered by  the  President's  clemency,  and  by  his  too  liberal 
interpretation  of  the  laws.  Nevertheless,  pardons  arrived 
at  the  War  Office  with  irritating  frequency.  The  head 
of  the  department  delayed,  argued,  protested,  blustered, 
threatened,  and  —  obeyed.42  To  do  the  last  was  especially 
hard  for  him  when  he  believed  that  Mr.  Lincoln  had 
been  imposed  on.  Such  an  instance  is  recalled  by  Henry 
Laurens  Dawes,  who  during  the  war  represented  a  Massa- 
chusetts district  in  Congress.  His  constituents  were  inter- 
ested in  a  quartermaster  from  his  State,  who  had  been 
sentenced  to  five  years  in  the  penitentiary  for  gambling 
with  government  money.  The  convict's  influential  neigh- 
bors, together  with  a  prominent  physician  and  the  prison 
doctor,  signed  a  petition  for  his  pardon,  on  the  ground 
that  his  health  had  become  seriously  impaired,  with  every 
prospect  of  a  speedy  death  unless  he  were  released. 

"  I  took  this  petition,"  says  Mr.  Dawes,  in  whose  hands 
the  document  had  been  placed,  "  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  who, 
after  carefully  reading  it,  turned  to  me  and  said, '  Do  you 
believe  that  statement  ? '  '  Certainly,  I  do,  Mr.  President, 
or  I  should  not  have  brought  it  to  you.'  '  Please  say  so 
here  on  the  back  of  it,  under  these  doctors.'  I  did  as 
requested,  adding,  '  And  because  I  believe  it  to  be  true  I 
join  in  this  petition.'  As  I  signed  my  name  he  remarked, 
*  We  can't  permit  that  man  to  die  in  prison  after  that 
statement,'  and  immediately  wrote  under  it  all,  '  Let  this 
man  be  discharged.  A.  L.'  He  handed  the  paper  back  to 


254      LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

me,  and  told  me  to  take  it  to  the  War  Office  and  give  it 
to  Mr.  Stan  ton.  He  saw  at  once  something  in  my  coun- 
tenance which  led  him  to  think  that  I  had  already  encoun- 
tered some  rough  weather  in  that  quarter,  and  had  little 
relish  for  more.  He  took  back  the  paper,  and  smiling, 
remarked  that  he  was  going  over  there  pretty  soon,  and 
would  take  it  himself." 

What  followed  was  related  the  next  day,  by  the  Presi- 
dent, to  two  Michigan  Representatives,  in  response  to 
their  appeal  for  the  pardon  of  a  deserter  who  had  been 
sentenced  to  death.  He  told  them  how,  on  the  preceding 
clay,  he  had  granted  a  petition  for  the  discharge  of  a 
convict,  and  how,  when  he  had  taken  the  order  to  the  War 
Department,  Mr.  Stanton  had  refused  to  execute  it. 

"  He  told  me,"  concluded  the  President,  "  that  it  was 
a  sham,  and  that  Dawes  had  got  me  to  pardon  the  biggest 
rascal  in  the  army,  and  that  I  had  made  gambling  with 
the  public  funds  perfectly  safe.  I  could  n't  get  him  to  let 
the  man  off.  The  truth  is,  I  have  been  doing  so  much 
of  this  thing  lately  that  I  have  lost  all  influence  with  this 
administration,  and  have  got  to  stop." 

On  learning  from  his  fellow  Congressmen  what  had 
happened,  the  member  from  Massachusetts  hastened  to 
the  White  House,  and  asked  the  President  whether  the 
pardon  had  been  issued. 

"  He  replied  that  it  had  not,"  writes  Mr.  Dawes,  continu- 
ing his  narrative,  "  and  then  recounted,  in  his  quaint  way, 
the  scene  in  the  War  Office,  much  as  it  had  been  already 
repeated  to  me.  I  said  to  him  that  I  could  not  afford  to 
have  this  matter  rest  on  any  uncertainty.  '  Retain  this  par- 
don, send  a  messenger  to  Albany,  and  make  certain  the 
truth  or  falsity  of  this  statement  —  at  my  expense,  if  we 
have  been  imposed  upon.'  His  reply  was,  '  I  think,  if  you 
believe  it,  I  will.  At  any  rate,  I  will  take  the  risk  on  the 
side  of  mercy.'  So  the  pardon  went  out." 

When  Mr.  Dawes,  after  the  adjournment  of  Congress, 
returned  to  his  home,  one  of  the  first  to  greet  him  on  the 


THE  CURBING  OF  STANTON     255 

street  was  his  "  dying  "  quartermaster.  The  man's  appear- 
ance of  robust  health  left  small  room  for  doubt  that  Mr. 
Stanton's  intuitions  had  been  correct.43 

The  President's  ever  ready  sympathy  went  out,  in  the 
same  impulsive  way,  to  a  handsome  young  lady  who 
called  on  him,  in  dire  distress.  She  had  been  married  to  a 
lieutenant  in  a  Pennsylvania  regiment,  who  had  been  com- 
pelled to  rejoin  his  command  the  day  after  the  wedding. 
He  had  then  secured  a  leave  of  absence  for  a  brief  honey- 
moon journey  with  his  bride ;  and  on  the  tour  had  failed 
to  see  a  War  Department  order  requiring  all  absent  offi- 
cers to  rejoin  their  regiments  by  a  certain  day,  under  pen- 
alty of  being  treated  as  deserters.  Upon  returning  home, 
after  the  specified  date,  he  had  found  a  notice  of  dismissal 
from  the  service.  His  young  wife,  leaving  her  husband 
prostrated  by  the  disgrace,  had  hastened  to  Washington, 
where  she  told  her  simple  story  to  the  President. 

"  Mr.  Lincoln,"  she  pleaded,  in  conclusion,  "  won't  you 
help  us?  I  promise  you,  if  you  will  restore  him,  he  will 
be  faithful  to  his  duty." 

The  President,  who  had  listened  with  a  somewhat 
amused  smile  on  his  furrowed  face,  said :  — 

"  And  you  say,  my  child,  that  Fred  was  compelled  to 
leave  you  the  day  after  the  wedding  ?  Poor  fellow,  I  don't 
wonder  at  his  anxiety  to  get  back,  and  if  he  stayed  a  little 
longer  than  he  ought  to  have  done,  we  '11  have  to  overlook 
his  fault  this  time.  Take  this  card  to  the  Secretary  of 
War  and  he  will  restore  your  husband." 

Later,  as  the  young  lady  left  the  office  of  the  War  De- 
partment, where  she  had  been  curtly  dismissed  with  a 
rebuke  by  the  Secretary  for  troubling  the  President,  she 
met  Mr.  Lincoln,  on  his  way  in. 

"  Well,  my  dear,"  he  asked,  "  have  you  seen  the  Sec- 
retary?" 

"Yes,  Mr.  Lincoln,"  she  replied,  "  and  he  seemed  very 
angry  with  me  for  going  to  you.  Won't  you  speak  to  him 
forme?" 


256       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

"  Give  yourself  no  trouble,"  was  the  answer.  "  I  will 
see  that  the  order  is  issued." 

Within  a  few  clays  the  lieutenant  was  reinstated ;  and 
not  long  thereafter,  on  the  field  of  Gettysburg,  he  re- 
deemed with  his  life  the  young  wife's  pledge.44 

Another  officer,  Captain  Edward  W.  Andrews,  who  had 
been  dismissed  from  the  service  unjustly,  as  he  thought, 
by  Secretary  Stanton,  appealed  to  Mr.  Lincoln  for  re- 
dress. The  incident  illustrates  at  once  the  Secretary's 
zeal  and  the  President's  manner  of  checking  it,  when  car- 
ried beyond  the  limits  of  propriety.  The  offence  which  had 
aroused  Mr.  Stanton's  ire  had  been  committed  during 
the  presidential  canvass  of  1864,  while  Captain  Andrews, 
as  Assistant  Adjutant-General  and  Chief-of-Staff  to  Gen- 
eral William  W.  Morris,  was  stationed  in  the  defences 
of  Baltimore.  The  Captain,  a  Democrat  who  favored 
the  election  of  General  McClellau,  had,  when  attending 
a  political  meeting  of  his  party,  one  evening,  been  called 
upon  persistently  for  a  speech. 

"  Forced  to  say  something,"  as  he  afterward  explained, 
"  I  contented  myself  with  a  brief  expression  of  my  high 
regard  for  McClellan  as  a  soldier,  and  a  statement  of  my 
intention  to  vote  for  him.  I  made  no  reference  to  Mr. 
Lincoln,  and  soon  left  the  hall." 

On  the  following  day,  when  the  occurrence  was  reported 
to  the  Secretary  of  War,  he  indignantly  commented  on 
the  Captain's  conduct,  and,  without  formally  assigning  a 
reason,  ordered  him  to  be  mustered  out  of  the  service. 
Captain  Andrews,  who  had  been  unwavering  in  his  loy- 
alty to  the  Union,  determined  not  to  suffer  this  disgrace 
without  a  protest.  Going  to  Washington,  he  sent  a  per- 
sonal friend,  a  Republican  member  of  Congress,  to  ask 
the  President  whether  the  commission  had  been  revoked 
by  his  order. 

"  I  know  nothing  about  it,"  was  Mr.  Lincoln's  reply. 
"  Of  course  Stanton  does  a  thousand  things  in  his  offi- 
cial character  which  I  can  know  nothing  about,  and 


THE    CURBING   OF   ST ANTON      257 

which  it  is  nc\  necessary  that  I  should  know  anything 
about." 

When  the  cas*  i  had  been  stated,  he  added  :  — 

"  Well,  that 's  QO  reason.  Andrews  has  as  good  a  right 
to  hold  on  to  his  Democracy,  if  he  chooses,  as  Stan  ton 
had  to  throw  his  overboard.  If  I  should  muster  out  all  my 
generals  who  avow  themselves  Democrats,  there  would  be 
a  sad  thinning  out  of  commanding  officers  in  the  army. 
No,  when  the  military  duties  of  a  soldier  are  fully  and 
faithfully  performed,  he  can  manage  his  politics  in  his 
own  way.  We  've  no  more  to  do  with  them  than  with  his 
religion.  Tell  this  officer  he  can  return  to  his  post,  and  if 
there  is  no  other  or  better  reason  for  the  order  of  Stanton 
than  the  one  he  suspects,  it  shall  do  him  no  harm.  The 
commission  he  holds  will  remain  as  good  as  new.  Sup- 
porting General  McClellan  for  the  presidency  is  no  vio- 
lation of  army  regulations,  and  as  a  question  of  taste  — • 
of  choosing  between  him  and  me  —  well,  I  'm  the  longest, 
but  he  's  better  looking." 

Captain  Andrews  did  return  to  his  post.  He  was  not 
again  molested  by  the  Secretary  of  War.45 

A  private,  equally  guiltless  of  intentional  wrong-doing, 
applied  to  the  Secretary  of  War  for  relief  from  unmerited 
disgrace.  He  had  been  sent  home  from  his  regiment  on 
sick  furlough.  At  its  expiration,  his  disability  continuing, 
he  had  not  rejoined  his  company  for  several  weeks ;  but 
had  regularly  forwarded  to  his  officers  surgeon's  certifi- 
cates of  his  condition.  These  had  probably  miscarried, 
for  upon  his  return  to  the  army,  as  soon  as  he  could 
travel,  he  had  been  surprised  to  learn  that  his  name  was 
on  the  rolls  as  a  deserter.  His  fault  having  been  a  purely 
technical  one,  he  had  been  permitted  to  go  on  duty ;  but 
the  stigma  remained  on  the  records.  The  task  of  having 
it  removed  was  entrusted  to  the  young  soldier's  friend 
and  neighbor,  James  F.  Wilson,  a  Congressman  at  the 
time,  from  Iowa.  He  called  on  the  Secretary  of  War, 
briefly  explained  the  case,  and  presented  the  accompany- 


258       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

ing  papers.    Declining   abruptly   to   receive   them,  Mrc 
Stanton  said  :  — 

"  Ah,  this  is  the  case  of  a  deserter,  is  it  ?  I  want  nothing 
to  do  with  it.  We  are  having  too  many  of  them  now.  We 
had  better  make  a  few  examples  by  shooting  a  deserter 
now  and  then.  That  might  put  a  stop  to  the  business." 

To  this  outburst,  Mr.  Wilson  answered  :  — 

"  Mr.  Secretary,  this  is  not  the  case  of  a  deserter,  except 
in  the  narrowest  and  most  technical  sense." 

"  That  is  what  they  all  say,"  was  the  reply.  "  Every 
man  of  them,  when  caught,  or  in  hiding  and  asking  for 
relief,  has  some  plausible  excuse.  I  have  no  time  to  spare 
for  the  consideration  of  the  cases  of  men  who  run  away 
from  their  duty." 

Having  failed  to  impress  upon  the  Secretary's  mind 
the  peculiar  merits  of  the  case,  the  Congressman  declared 
that  he  should  lay  it  before  the  President,  who  would 
no  doubt  restore  the  soldier  to  his  place  on  the  rolls.  To 
which  Mr.  Stanton  rejoined :  — 

"  Go  to  the  President,  if  you  please.  I  will  not  consider 
the  case,  nor  will  I  execute  such  an  order." 

Mr.  Wilson,  narrating  the  incident  many  years  later, 
writes :  — 

"  Proceeding  at  once  to  the  Executive  Mansion,  I  placed 
.  the  papers  in  the  hands  of  the  President.  He  read  them, 
and  said,  4If  the  statements  herein  made  are  true,  this 
soldier  ought  to  be  relieved  ;  for  he  is  in  no  proper  sense 
a  deserter.  He  seems  to  have  done  all  that  he  could  do  to 
comply  with  the  regulations  governing  such  cases,  and  to 
discharge  his  duty.  Are  you  sure  that  the  facts  are  cor- 
rectly stated  ? '  To  this  question  my  answer  was,  '  I  have 
personal  knowledge  that  all  of  the  material  facts  are  true  as 
stated  in  the  papers  you  have  read ' ;  and  I  explained  the 
sources  of  my  knowledge.  The  President  handed  me  the 
papers,  requesting  me  to  endorse  on  them  the  statement  I 
had  made,  which  I  did,  and,  after  signing  my  name  to  it, 
I  hauded  the  papers  back  to  him.  He  was  proceeding  to 


THE  CURBING   OF  STANTON     259 

endorse  the  proper  order  on  them,  when  I  requested  him 
to  stay  his  hand  for  a  moment  that  he  might  be  placed  in 
possession  of  some  further  facts  connected  with  the  case. 
He  complied  with  the  request,  and  I  gave  him  a  circum- 
stantial statement  of  my  interview  with  the  Secretary  of 
War.  It  seemed  to  interest  him.  At  its  conclusion  he 
made  no  remark,  but  endorsed  and  signed  the  order  as 
requested.  He  then  returned  the  paper  to  me,  quaintly 
remarking,  '  Your  persistence  in  this  case  is  right.  There 
is  the  order,  and  I  guess  it  will  be  obeyed.'  I  thanked  the 
President,  and  was  about  to  depart,  when  it  occurred  to  me 
that  another  question  and  answer  might  be  of  some  service. 
I  asked  him  what  I  should  do  in  case  the  Secretary  of 
War  should  decline  to  execute  the  order.  He  promptly 
replied,  '  Report  the  fact  to  me,  but  I  guess  he  will  obey 
that  order.  I  know  it  is  a  small  thing,  as  some  would  look 
at  it,  as  it  only  relates  to  a  private  soldier,  and  we  have 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  them.  But  the  way  to  have  good 
soldiers  is  to  treat  them  rightly.  At  all  events,  that  is  my 
order  in  this  case.  Let  me  know  what  comes  of  it.' 

"The  result  of  this  interview,"  continues  Mr.  Wilson, 
"  was  promptly  reported  to  the  Secretary  of  War.  The 
papers  were  placed  before  him  and  his  attention  directed  to 
the  endorsement  of  the  President.  He  read  it  and  evidently 
was  vexed,  for  with  a  noticeable  degree  of  feeling  he  re- 
peated the  declaration  that  he  would  not  execute  the  order. 
A  circumstantial  statement  was  then  made  to  him  of  the 
interview  with  the  President,  nothing  being  omitted.  This 
did  not  seem  to  affect  the  Secretary  nor  move  him  to  com- 
pliance. After  waiting  a  moment  and  seeing  no  indication 
of  action  on  his  part,  I  picked  up  the  papers,  remarking 
as  I  did  so,  'Mr.  Secretary,  as  you  decline  to  obey  the  Pre- 
sident's order  to  you,  I  will  obey  the  one  he  gave  to  me, 
and  report  the  result  of  this  interview  to  him  at  once.' 
Leaving  the  Secretary's  room,  I  proceeded  down  the  stair- 
way leading  to  the  first  floor  of  the  department,  intending 
to  go  directly  to  the  Executive  Mansion  with  my  report 


260      LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

of  the  foregoing  interview,  and  ascertain  the  further  pur- 
pose of  the  President.  Before  I  reached  the  outer  door  of 
the  department  a  messenger  overtook  me  and  said  the 
Secretary  desired  to  see  me.  Returning  to  his  room,  I 
found  him  apparently  in  better  mood,  and  his  manner 
greatly  changed.  He  pleasantly  requested  me  to  give  him 
the  papers  in  the  case,  and  I  passed  them  to  him.  With- 
out further  remark  he  endorsed  on  them  directions  to  the 
Adjutant-General  to  execute  the  President's  order.  This 
done,  he  turned  to  me  and  said,  '  It  seems  to  me  that  the 
President  would  rather  have  a  fuss  with  anybody  than 
miss  a  chance  to  do  a  kindness  to  a  private  soldier.  But 
I  suppose  this  case  is  all  right.  At  all  events,  I  like 
your  dogged  persistence  in  it,  and  we  will  be  good  friends.' 
And  so  we  ever  after  were." 

Mr.  Lincoln's  firmness  in  the  matter  was  still  further 
evinced,  some  days  later,  when,  on  learning  from  Mr. 
Wilson  how  it  had  terminated,  he  remarked  :  — 

"  Well,  I  'm  glad  you  stuck  to  it,  and  that  it  ended  as 
it  did ;  for  I  meant  it  should  so  end,  if  I  had  to  give  it 
personal  attention.  A  private  soldier  has  as  much  right 
to  justice  as  a  Major-General." 4B 

If  the  stern  Stanton  was  disinclined  to  obey  the  Presi- 
dent's orders  when  they  related  to  men  who  had  been 
unjustly  treated,  how  much  stronger  must  have  been  his 
repugnance  toward  the  clemency  that  was  extended  to 
wrongdoers  undergoing  deserved  punishment.  An  in- 
stance of  this  is  outlined  in  two  notes  addressed  to  him 
by  Mr.  Lincoln.  In  the  first  the  President  wrote :  — 

"  Mrs.  Baird  tells  me  that  she  is  a  widow  ;  that  her  two 
sons  and  only  support  joined  the  army,  where  one  of  them 
still  is ;  that  her  other  son,  Isaac  P.  Baird,  is  a  private  in 
the  Seventy-second  Pennsylvania  Volunteers — Baxter's 
Fire  Zouaves,  Company  K ;  that  he  is  now  under  guard 
with  his  regiment  on  a  charge  of  desertion  ;  that  he  was 
under  arrest  for  desertion,  so  that  he  could  not  take  the 
benefit  of  returning  under  the  proclamation  on  that  sub- 


THE  CURBING  OF   STANTON     261 

ject.  Please  have  it  ascertained  if  this  is  correct,  and  if 
it  is,  let  him  be  discharged  from  arrest  and  go  on  duty.  I 
think,  too,  he  should  have  his  pay  for  duty  actually  per- 
formed. Loss  of  pay  falls  so  hard  upon  poor  families."  *7 

That  Mr.  Lincoln's  wishes  were  not,  at  the  time,  com- 
plied with  may  be  inferred  from  the  second  note,  sent 
many  months  later.  Having  restated  Baird's  case,  the 
President  wrote :  — 

"  At  the  tearful  appeal  of  the  poor  mother,  I  made  a 
direction  that  he  be  allowed  to  enlist  for  a  new  term,  on 
the  same  conditions  as  others.  She  now  comes,  and  says 
she  cannot  get  it  acted  upon.  Please  do  it."  48 

This  polite  yet  firm  command  finally  won  obedience. 
Baird  was  transferred  to  another  regiment,  and  was  per- 
mitted to  reenlist. 

When  other  means  of  staying  the  President's  merciful 
hand  failed,  the  Secretary  of  War  had  recourse  to  threats. 
So  Mr.  Lincoln  informed  his  friend  Joshua  F.  Speed,  on 
the  occasion  of  a  visit  to  the  White  House,  a  few  weeks 
before  the  assassination.  Mr.  Speed  was  present  when  two 
women  appealed  for  the  release,  —  the  one,  of  her  hus- 
band, the  other,  of  her  son,  both  of  whom  had  been  im- 
prisoned for  resisting  the  draft  in  western  Pennsylvania. 

"Where  is  your  petition?"  asked  the  President. 

"  Mr.  Lincoln,"  replied  the  old  lady,  "  I  've  got  no  peti- 
tion. I  went  to  a  lawyer  to  get  one  drawn,  and  I  had  not 
the  money  to  pay  him  and  come  here  too ;  so  I  thought 
I  would  just  come  and  ask  you  to  let  me  have  my  boy." 

"  And  it 's  your  husband  you  want  ?  "  said  he,  turning 
to  the  young  woman. 

"  Yes,"  she  answered. 

The  papers  in  the  case  were,  in  response  to  the  Presi- 
dent's summons,  brought  to  him  by  Charles  A.  Dana,  the 
Assistant  Secretary  of  War. 

"  General,"  said  Mr.  Lincoln,  after  counting  the  names 
of  the  prisoners,  "  there  are  twenty-seven  of  these  men. 
Is  there  any  difference  in  degree  of  their  guilt?" 


262       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

**  No,"  was  the  answer ;  "  it  is  a  bad  case  and  a  merciful 
finding." 

"  Well,"  said  the  President,  looking  out  of  the  window 
and  seemingly  talking  to  himself,  "  these  poor  fellows  have, 
I  think,  suffered  enough.  They  have  been  in  prison  fifteen 
months.  I  have  been  thinking  so  for  some  time,  and  have 
so  said  to  Stanton,  and  he  always  threatened  to  resign 
if  they  are  released.  But  he  has  said  so  about  other 
matters,  and  never  did.  So  now,  while  I  have  the  paper 
in  my  hand,  I  will  turn  out  the  flock." 

Then  be  wrote,  "  Let  the  prisoners  named  in  the  within 
paper  be  discharged  "  ;  and  signed  his  name.  Turning  to 
the  women,  he  said  :  — 

"  Now,  ladies,  you  can  go.  Your  son,  madam,  and  your 
husband,  madam,  is  free."  49 

The  Secretary's  threat  to  resign,  it  may  be  added,  proved 
to  be,  like  its  predecessors  —  a  sound  and  nothing  more. 

Thus  Mr.  Lincoln  found  it  —  using  his  own  phrase  — 
"  necessary  to  put  the  foot  down  firmly,"  when  Stanton 
would  have  forced  shut  the  gates  of  mercy.  But  stronger 
pressure  still  had  to  be  exerted,  at  times,  to  keep  an  open 
door  in  the  War  Department  for  the  President's  appoint- 
ments. An  instance  of  this  has  been  recalled  by  former 
Vice-President  William  A.  Wheeler.  He  relates  that  while 
in  Congress,  during  the  early  days  of  the  war,  he  applied 
to  Mr.  Lincoln,  before  leaving  Washington  at  the  close 
of  a  session,  for  the  appointment  of  his  friend,  John  A. 
Sabin,  as  additional  paymaster.  The  President,  assenting, 
directed  his  private  secretary  to  take  note  of  the  matter. 
A  few  weeks  later,  Mr.  Lincoln  wrote  to  Mr.  Wheeler  that 
the  appointment  had  been  sent  to  the  Secretary  of  War, 
who  would  notify  Mr.  Sabin  to  report  for  muster  into  the 
service.  As  no  such  notification  was  received,  and  as  a  let- 
ter of  inquiry  to  the  Secretary  remained  unanswered,  the 
Congressman,  upon  his  return  to  the  Capital,  waited  upon 
Mr.  Stanton  and  called  his  attention  to  the  appointment. 

"  He  had  no  recollection  of  the   matter,"    says    Mr. 


THE   CURBING   OF   STANTON     263 

Wheeler,  "but  told  me,  in  his  brusque  manner,  that  Mr. 
Sabiu's  uame  would  be  sent  in,  with  hundreds  of  others, 
to  the  Senate  for  its  consideration.  Earnestly  I  argued 
that  Mr.  Sabin  had  been  appointed  by  the  Commander- 
in-Chief  of  the  army,  and  that  it  was  unjust  to  ask  hiut  to 
wait,  perhaps  the  whole  winter,  the  tardy  action  of  the 
Senate  upon  his  nomination,  and  that  he  was  entitled  to 
be  mustered  in  at  once.  But  all  in  vain.  I  got  but  this 
reply  from  the  iron  Secretary, '  You  have  my  answer ;  no 
argument.'  M  I  went  to  the  chief  clerk  of  the  department 
and  asked  him  for  Mr.  Lincoln's  letter  directing  the  ap- 
pointment. Receiving  it,  I  proceeded  to  the  White  House, 
although  it  was  after  Executive  hours.  I  can  see  Mr. 
Lincoln  now  as  when  I  entered  the  room.  He  wore  a  long 
calico  dressing-gown,  reaching  to  his  heels.  His  feet  were 
encased  in  a  pair  of  old-fashioned,  leathern  slippers  —  such 
as  we  used  to  find  in  the  old-time  country  hotels,  and 
which  had  evidently  seen  much  service  in  Springfield. 
Above  these  appeared  the  home-made,  blue  woolen  stock- 
ings which  he  wore  at  all  seasons  of  the  year.  He  was 
sitting  in  a  splint  rocking-chair,  with  his  legs  elevated  and 
stretched  across  his  office  table.  He  greeted  me  warmly. 
Apologizing  for  my  intrusion  at  that  unofficial  hour,  I 
told  him  I  had  called  simply  to  ascertain  which  was  the  par- 
amount power  in  the  government,  he  or  the  Secretary  of 
War.  Letting  down  his  legs  and  straightening  himself  up 
in  his  chair,  he  answered,  '  Well,  it  is  generally  supposed 
(emphasizing  the  last  word)  I  am.  What 's  the  matter  ? ' 
"  I  then  briefly  recalled  the  facts  attending  Sabin's 
appointment,"  continues  Mr.  Wheeler,  "  when,  without  a 
word  of  comment,  he  said,  'Give  me  my  letter.'  Then 
taking  his  pen,  he  endorsed  upon  it,  *  Let  the  within 
named  J.  A.  Sabin  be  mustered  in  AT  ONCE.  It  is  due  to 
him  and  to  Mr.  W.  under  the  circumstances.  —  A.  Lin- 
coln.' He  underscored  with  double  lines  the  words  *at 
once.'  Armed  with  this  Executive  mandate,  I  called  on 
Mr.  Stauton  the  next  morning,  who,  on  its  presentation, 


264       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

was  simply  furious.  He  charged  me  with  interfering  with 
his  prerogatives,  and  with  undue  persistence  —  perhaps 
as  to  the  last,  not  without  some  force,  for  I  had  wearied 
with  the  delay  and  was  a  little  provoked  by  what  I 
regarded  as  the  '  insolence  of  office.'  I  told  him  I  would 
call  the  next  morning  for  the  order  to  muster  in.  I  called 
accordingly,  and  handing  it  to  me  in  a  rage,  he  said,  '  I 
hope  I  shall  never  hear  of  this  matter  again.'  " 51 

The  member  from  New  York  was  always,  thereafter, 
cordially  received  at  the  War  Department ;  and  none  of 
his  requests  were  again  refused  by  the  grim  minister  who 
presided  there. 

One  more  episode  in  this  class  must  suffice.  We  are 
indebted  for  it  to  Josiah  B.  Grinnell,  a  member  of  Con- 
gress from  Iowa  during  the  latter  years  of  the  war.  He 
called  on  Mr.  Stanton  to  urge  the  advancement  of  Colonel 
Elliott  W.  Rice  to  the  rank  of  brigadier-general.  That 
sterling  officer  had  not  only  shown  himself  worthy  of  the 
promotion,  at  the  head  of  his  regiment,  the  Seventh  Iowa 
Infantry,  but  he  had  demonstrated  his  fitness  for  it  as 
well,  in  the  actual  command  of  a  brigade.  The  Secretary 
of  War,  however,  according  to  his  wont,  regarded  this 
application  as  an  unwarrantable  interference  with  his 
department. 

"  No  use,  sir,"  was  his  reply  to  Mr.  Grinnell's  importu- 
nities ;  "  your  case,  sir,  is  like  thousands.  What  we  want 
now  is  victories,  not  brigadiers.  We  are  in  a  crisis.  I 
refuse,  sir,  to  make  a  promise  even  to  consider  the  wish 
of  a  civilian  at  such  a  time.  I  am  sorry.  My  desk  is  loaded 
with  business.  I  must  say  good-morning." 

A  second  interview  ended  as  abruptly  as  the  first. 

"  No  use,"  repeated  Mr.  Stanton,  "  in  a  civilian's  talking 
to  me  on  the  subject,  sir." 

"  Neither,"  replied  Mr.  Grinnell,  "  can  I  waive  a  civil- 
ian's rights." 

"  Then  go  to  the  President,"  said  the  Secretary  sharply. 

"  That  would  be  an  offence,"  rejoined  the  Congressman. 


THE   CURBING   OF  STANTON     265 

"  My  regard  for  the  Secretary  of  War  would  make  that 
step  a  last  resort." 

"  Get  your  request  granted  and  X  will  resign,"  was 
Stanton's  angry  retort. 

After  another  unsuccessful  effort  Mr.  Grinnell  did  go 
to  the  President. 

"  What  does  Stanton  say  ?  "  asked  Mr.  Lincoln. 

"  Nothing,"  was  the  answer,  "  will  not  even  look  up  the 
papers." 

"Yes,  I  know,"  responded  the  President,  "the  cases 
like  yours  are  hundreds,  and  it  disturbs  him — even  my 
hint  that  we  may  move  up  the  boys  and  encourage  enlist- 
ments. It  is  a  very  delicate  question.  Don't  be  impatient, 
but  get  on  the  right  side  of  a  very  good  officer." 

When  our  undaunted  Congressman  next  presented  him- 
self at  the  Executive  Mansion,  Mr.  Lincoln  said :  — 

"  Stanton  was  fairly  mad  on  the  suggestion  of  promo- 
tion by  civilians  or  members  of  Congress." 

To  which  Mr.  Grinnell  replied  :  — 

"  I  base  my  claim  on  the  recommendations  of  superior 
officers  in  the  field." 

"You  get  the  facts,"  suggested  Mr.  Lincoln,  "and 
quietly  say  the  President  hopes  your  request  will  be 
granted." 

There  followed  still  another  interview,  as  Mr.  Lincoln 
was  returning  from  a  walk  in  which  he  had  vainly  tried 
to  shift  the  weary  burden  of  the  cares  that  beset  him. 

"  I  cannot  attempt  to  make  Stanton  over  at  this  stage," 
he  declared.  "  You  will  win,  if  patient." 

But  as  they  reached  the  White  House  door,  the  Presi- 
dent asked :  — 

"  Have  you  a  slip  of  paper  ?  " 

Resting  the  scrap  that  had  been  handed  to  him  against 
&ne  of  the  columns,  he  addressed  this  note  to  Mr.  Stanton  : 

"  Sir,  —  Without  an  if  or  an  and,  let  Colonel  Elliott  W. 
Rice  be  made  a  Brigadier- General  in  the  United  States 
array.  —  A.  Lincoln." 


266       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

Giving  this  to  Mr.  Grinnell,  the  President  added :  — 

"  Report,  if  necessary,  from  the  War  Office." 

When  the  order  was  presented  at  the  department,  the 
Secretary  muttered,  as  he  tossed  it  into  his  waste  basket : 

"  I  will  resign." 

But  as  the  Congressman  turned  to  go,  he  said,  with  a 
smile :  — 

"  Wait,  Mr.  Grinnell ;  come  over  and  take  dinner  with 
me."52 

Colonel  Rice  was  duly  commissioned  a  brigadier.  Not 
long  afterward,  the  member  from  the  Fourth  Iowa  District 
secured  a  military  appointment  for  one  friend,  and  a  pro- 
motion in  the  army  for  another,  on  demand.  It  is  a  note- 
worthy fact,  moreover,  that  Mr.  Grinnell,  like  Mr.  Wilson 
and  Mr.  Wheeler,  won  by  his  spirit  the  arrogant  Stanton's 
good-will,  or  a  semblance  thereof.  For  the  Secretary  of 
War  may  be  said  to  have  reversed,  on  occasion,  the  maxim 
of  that  other  great  minister,  Cardinal  Richelieu,  and  to 
have  conciliated  when  he  could  not  crush. 

Military  appointments  of  far  greater  importance  than 
those  of  brigadiers  and  paymasters  were  made  by  the 
President  in  the  teeth  of  Mr.  Stanton's  opposition.  All 
the  power  at  the  war-lord's  command  was  exerted  in  vain, 
at  certain  junctures,  to  prevent  the  advancement,  sever- 
ally, of  Rosecrans,  Hooker,  and  McClellan.  The  first  of 
these  became  commander  of  the  Army  of  the  Ohio,  under 
peculiar  circumstances.  When  it  was  decided  to  remove 
General  Buell  from  that  place,  the  choice  of  the  adminis- 
tration fell  upon  one  of  the  Secretary's  favorites,  General 
George  H.  Thomas  of  Virginia.  As  soon  as  an  order 
directing  this  change  reached  headquarters,  at  Louisville, 
the  army  was  turned  over  to  Thomas,  who  was,  at  the 
time,  in  command  of  the  First  Division.53  That  officer, 
however,  as  promptly,  despatched  a  request  to  Washing- 
ton for  Buell's  immediate  restoration. 

"  General  Buell's  preparations,"  it  read,  "  have  been 
completed  to  move  against  the  enemy,  and  I  therefore 


THE  CURBING   OF  STANTON     267 

respectfully  ask  that  he  may  be  retained  in  command. 
My  position  is  very  embarrassing,  not  being  as  well  in- 
formed as  I  should  be  as  the  commander  of  this  army 
and  on  the  assumption  of  such  a  responsibility." 5< 

Upon  receipt  of  this  appeal  Buell  was  reinstated.  But 
within  a  few  weeks  —  after  he  had  fought  the  indeci- 
sive battle  of  Perryville  —  dissatisfaction  with  his  course 
revived,  and  led  to  his  final  removal.  The  selection  of 
his  successor  gave  Mr.  Lincoln  some  trouble ;  for  the  Sec- 
retary of  the  Treasury,  as  well  as  the  Secretary  of  War, 
had  a  candidate.  Mr.  Chase  urged  the  appointment  of 
General  William  Starke  Rosecrans,  whose  successes  in 
western  Virginia  and  northern  Mississippi  had  brought 
him  into  prominence.  A  blunt,  impulsive  soldier,  indiffer- 
ent to  the  opinions  —  on  military  matters  —  of  civilians, 
however  lofty,  "  Old  Rosy,"  as  the  soldiers  fondly  called 
him,  had  failed  to  win  Mr.  Stanton's  favor.  So  the  Sec- 
retary of  War  hotly  opposed  his  advancement  and,  with 
equal  vehemence,  advocated  the  appointment  of  Thomas, 
who  had  so  magnanimously  declined  the  command,  several 
weeks  before.  The  President,  having  listened  patiently  to 
both  his  Secretaries,  said :  — 

"Let  the  Virginian  wait.   We  will  try  Rosecrans."55 

The  details  of  the  discussion  have  not  been  preserved, 
but  Mr.  Stanton's  behavior,  after  he  left  the  Executive 
Mansion,  indicated  how  entirely  his  wishes  had  been  ig- 
nored. Flushed  with  anger,  he  returned  to  his  office,  and 
said  abruptly  to  an  officer  who  had  previously  excited  his 
wrath  by  suggesting  the  appointment  of  Rosecrans  :  — 

"  Well,  you  have  your  choice  of  idiots.  Now  look  out 
for  frightful  disasters."  M 

Mr.  Stanton  then  issued  the  orders  which  placed  General 
Rosecrans,  as  General  Buell's  successor,  in  command  of 
the  newly  constituted  Department  of  the  Cumberland. 

Three  months  later,  the  President  and  the  Secretary  of 
War  were  again  at  variance  over  the  selection  of  a  com- 
mander —  this  time,  for  the  Army  of  the  Potomac.  The 


268       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

noble  but  ill-fated  troops  composing  that  body  had,  after 
the  disaster  of  Fredericksburg  and  the  hardships  of  the 
so-called  "  mud  march,"  regained  the  winter  camp  near 
Falmouth.  Here  their  commander,  Major-General  Am- 
brose E.  Burnside,  humiliated  by  his  failures  and  smart- 
ing under  the  criticisms  of  some  of  his  lieutenants,  had,  on 
January  23,  1863,  written  the  famous  General  Orders  No. 
8,  disciplining  nine  officers,  by  the  removal  of  five  from  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac  and  the  dismissal  of  four  from  the 
service.57  The  document  had  been  presented  to  the  Presi- 
dent for  his  approval,  with  the  consistent  alternative  of 
accepting  General  Burnside's  resignation.  That  loyal 
officer,  frankly  acknowledging  the  lack  of  confidence  in 
himself  which  he,  however,  resented  in  his  subordinates, 
had  twice  before  asked  to  be  relieved  from  the  command 
and  to  be  retired  to  private  life.  His  successor  had  there- 
fore already  been  tentatively  selected  by  Mr.  Lincoln,  and, 
strange  to  say,  he  was  the  man  whom  Burnside's  orders 
had  most  severely  marked  for  disgrace  —  Major-General 
Joseph  Hooker.58  In  the  important  engagements  of  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac,  Hooker  had  gained  unusual  dis- 
tinction. He  had  led  divisions  and  corps  with  equal  gal- 
lantry. There  was  no  handsomer  or  braver  officer  in  the 
service  than  "  Fighting  Joe,"  as  the  soldiers  and  war  cor- 
respondents called  him.59  His  commanding  appearance 
and  engaging  manner,  no  less  than  his  dash  and  skill,  had 
rendered  his  presence  on  the  field  of  battle  an  inspiration 
to  the  troops.  These  high  qualities  were  in  a  measure 
offset,  however,  by  the  liquor  habit,  selfish  ambition,  a 
spirit  of  insubordination,  an  exaggerated  idea  of  his  own 
merits,  and  a  proneness  to  belittle  or  to  criticise  adversely 
the  acts  of  other  officers.  His  unrestrained  censure  of  his 
superiors,  civil  as  well  as  military,  after  the  battle  of 
Fredericksburg,  had  moved  General  Burnside  to  say  of 
him,  in  the  orders  submitted  to  the  President :  — 

"  General  Joseph  Hooker,  Major-General  of  Volunteers 
and  Brigadier-General  U.  S.  Army,  having  been  guilty 


THE  CURBING   OF  STANTON     269 

of  unjust  and  unnecessary  criticisms  of  the  actions  of 
his  superior  officers,  and  of  the  authorities,  and  having, 
by  the  general  tone  of  his  conversation,  endeavored  to  cre- 
ate distrust  in  the  minds  of  officers  who  have  associated 
with  him,  and  having,  by  omissions  and  otherwise,  made 
reports  and  statements  which  were  calculated  to  create 
incorrect  impressions,  and  for  habitually  speaking  in  dis- 
paraging terms  of  other  officers,  is  hereby  dismissed  the 
service  of  the  United  States  as  a  man  unfit  to  hold  an 
important  commission  during  a  crisis  like  the  present,  when 
so  much  patience,  charity,  confidence,  consideration,  and 
patriotism,  are  due  from  every  soldier  in  the  field."  m 

In  conjunction  with  this  arraignment  of  Hooker,  it  should 
be  said  that  Mr.  Stanton  had,  for  some  time,  opposed  his 
elevation  to  an  independent  command.  Notwithstanding 
the  General's  ability,  courage,  and  personal  popularity, 
his  faults  unfitted  him,  in  the  Secretary's  opinion,  for  the 
control  of  the  most  important  army  in  the  service.  When 
choice  of  a  commander,  in  the  event  of  Burnside's  resig- 
nation, was  nevertheless  found  to  lie  between  Hooker  and 
General  George  G.  Meade,  the  head  of  the  War  Depart- 
ment took  the  position  that  the  former  was  not  to  be 
appointed  in  any  contingency.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
President,  recognizing  the  importance  of  making  a  selec- 
tion that  would  be  equally  acceptable  to  the  army  and  to 
the  country  at  large,  inclined  toward  "  Fighting  Joe." 
"  Hooker  does  talk  badly,"  he  admitted,  when  his  attention 
was  called  to  that  officer's  indiscreet  language  concerning 
General  Burnside  and  himself ;  "  but  the  trouble  is,  he  is 
stronger  with  the  country  to-day  than  any  other  man."  w 
This  strength  was  augmented  by  the  friendship  of  Secre- 
tary Chase,  who  —  again  in  opposition  to  Secretary  Stan- 
ton  —  had,  for  some  time,  urged  General  Hooker's  ad- 
vancement.82 In  return  for  this  support  the  General  was 
expected  to  throw  the  weight  of  whatever  military  glory 
he  might  gain,  in  favor  of  Mr.  Chase's  presidential  aspi- 
rations. As  the  intrigue  came  to  the  knowledge  of  Mr. 


270      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

Stanton,  his  personal  loyalty  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  no  less  than 
his  distrust  of  General  Hooker,  rendered  unavailing  the 
repeated  efforts  that  were  made  to  remove  his  opposition. 
Whether  or  not  he  called  the  President's  attention  to  the 
electioneering  aspect  of  the  matter  is  not  known  ;  but,  in 
his  eagerness  to  prevent  the  appointment,  he  is  not  likely 
x>  have  omitted  it.  If  the  appeal  to  Mr.  Lincoln's  political 
interests  was  made,  it  failed,  as  had  all  other  arguments, 
to  move  him  from  the  conclusion  that  circumstances  re- 
quired the  selection  of  Hooker.63  The  President,  having 
declined  to  disorganize  the  already  demoralized  Army  of 
the  Potomac  by  approving  of  the  drastic  measures  de- 
manded by  its  commander,  directed  the  Secretary  of  War 
to  issue  orders  relieving  General  Burnside  and  assigning 
General  Hooker  to  his  place.  When  this  decision  was 
announced,  Mr.  Stanton's  first  impulse  was  to  resign.  Then 
cooler  counsels  prevailed.  He  not  only  remained  faithfully 
at  his  post,  but  he  also  supported  the  new  commander  to 
the  utmost  of  his  power,  until  the  defeat  at  Chancellors- 
ville  added  the  name  of  Hooker  to  the  dreary  list  of  gen- 
erals who  led  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  to  disaster. 

The  operations  of  "this  poor  old  strategy-possessed 
army  "  had  been  hampered,  from  time  to  time,  by  the  ne- 
cessity for  defending  Washington.  The  loss  of  the  north- 
ern Capital,  particularly  in  the  earlier  years  of  the  war, 
would,  from  a  diplomatic  no  less  than  from  a  military 
point  of  view,  have  been  a  serious  blow  to  the  Union  cause. 
This  fact  was  appreciated  more  keenly,  perhaps,  by  the 
Secretary  of  War  than  by  any  other  member  of  the  ad- 
ministration. His  anxiety  on  the  subject  previous  to  and 
during  General  McClellan's  Peninsular  campaign  led  to 
conflicts  of  opinion  between  Mr.  Stanton  and  the  Presi- 
dent. As  the  affair  involved  their  only  recorded  disagree- 
ments in  important  strategical  matters,  it  has  an  interest 
beyond  that  created  by  the  endless  discussions  over  who 
was  and  who  was  not  to  blame  for  the  failure  of  that  expe- 
During  the  winter  of  1861-62,  Mr.  Lincoln,  with 


THE   CURBING  OF   ST ANTON     271 

a  view  to  the  protection  of  Washington  while  attacking 
Richmond,  had  advocated  an  early  opening  of  the  spring 
campaign  by  a  direct  march  overland  upon  the  Confeder- 
ate Capital.  This  plan,  though  warmly  approved  of  by 
Secretary  Stanton  and  certain  prominent  military  men, 
was  as  earnestly  opposed  by  General  McClellan,  who 
urged  an  advance  by  way  of  the  lower  Chesapeake  Bay 
with  a  base  at  Urbana.  After  much  discussion,  the  plans 
were,  with  the  consent  of  the  President,  submitted  by 
General  McClellan  on  March  8, 1862,  to  a  council  of  divi- 
sion commanders.  As  eight  of  these  out  of  twelve  voted 
in  favor  of  the  Urbana  route,  Mr.  Lincoln  acquiesced.64 
Not  so,  Mr.  Stanton,  whose  confidence  in  the  general 
commanding  the  army  was  rapidly  waning.  McClellan's 
assurances  that  the  movement  would  "  not  at  all  expose 
the  City  of  Washington  to  danger,"  and  that  he  regarded 
"  success  as  certain  by  all  the  chances  of  war,"  65  did  not 
satisfy  the  head  of  the  War  Department.  He  still  objected 
to  the  project  under  which  more  than  one  hundred  thou- 
sand troops  were  to  be  set  afloat  in  wooden  bottoms,  to 
seek  a  battle-field  many  miles  away,  while  the  enemy  lay 
fortified  before  the  Capital. 

"  We  can  do  nothing  else,"  said  the  President,  "  than 
adopt  this  plan,  and  discard  all  others  ;  with  eight  out  of 
twelve  division  commanders  approving  it,  we  can't  reject 
it  and  adopt  another,  without  assuming  all  the  responsi- 
bility in  case  of  the  failure  of  the  one  we  adopt." 

The  Secretary  took  issue  with  Mr.  Lincoln  as  to  his 
method  of  computation. 

"  Who  are  the  eight  generals,"  he  asked,  "  upon  whose 
votes  you  are  going  to  adopt  the  proposed  plan  of  cam- 
paign? All  made  so  since  General  McClellan  assumed 
command,  and  upon  his  recommendation,  influenced  by 
his  views,  and  subservient  to  his  wishes,  while  the  other 
four  are  beyond  these  influences,  so  that  in  fact  you  have 
in  this  decision  only  the  operation  of  one  man's  mind."  M 

This  clever,  though  not  entirely  correct  analysis  of  the 


272       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

vote  reversed  the  odds  of  eight  against  four  in  support 
of  McClellan  so  that  they  became  four  to  one  in  favor  of 
Mr.  Lincoln's  plan.  Admitting  the  apparent  force  of  the 
argument,  he  remained,  however,  steadfast  in  his  decision 
to  abide  by  the  action  of  the  council ;  and  instructed  Mr. 
Stan  ton  to  proceed  with  the  preparations  for  the  cam- 
paign. How  chagrined  the  Secretary  felt  over  his  lack  of 
influence  was  revealed  at  a  conference  held,  about  this 
time,  with  the  Committee  on  the  Conduct  of  the  War. 
"  He  was  thoroughly  discouraged,"  says  one  of  the  mem- 
bers. "  He  told  us  the  President  had  gone  back  to  his 
first  love  as  to  General  McClellan,  and  that  it  was  need- 
less for  him  or  for  us  to  labor  with  him,  although  he  had 
finally  been  prevailed  on  to  restrict  McClellan's  command 
to  the  Army  of  the  Potomac."  67  One  other  crumb  of 
comfort  the  disappointed  Stanton  had  carried  away  from 
his  discussion  with  the  Executive.  Their  interview  closed 
with  the  President's  assurance  that  sufficient  troops  should 
be  retained  for  the  protection  of  the  Capital.  To  this  end, 
on  the  day  the  division  commanders  met,  Mr.  Lincoln 
ordered :  — 

"  No  change  of  the  base  of  operations  of  the  Army  of 
the  Potomac  shall  be  made  without  leaving  in  and  about 
Washington  such  a  force  as  in  the  opinion  of  the  General- 
in-Chief  and  the  commanders  of  all  the  army  corps  shall 
leave  said  city  entirely  secure."  68 

When  the  evacuation  of  Manassas  and  Centreville,  on 
the  following  day,  rendered  a  change  of  plan  necessary, 
General  McClellan  submitted  the  question  with  the  Pre- 
sident's order  to  four  newly  created  corps  commanders, 
Generals  McDowell,  Sumner,  Heintzelman,  and  Keyes. 
They  unanimously  approved  of  his  alternative  route  by 
way  of  the  peninsula  between  the  York  and  the  James 
rivers,  with  a  base  at  Fortress  Monroe,  providing,  among 
other  things,  that  the  troops  left  in  the  forts  on  the  Po- 
tomac and  in  front  of  the  Virginia  line  to  cover  Wash- 
ington should  be  "such  as  to  give  an  entire  feeling  of 


THE  CURBING  OF  STANTON     273 

security  for  its  safety  from  menace."  This  required  from 
40,000  to  55,000  men,  according  to  the  several  stipula- 
tions made  by  the  corps  commanders.69  Their  conclusions 
were,  with  General  McClellan's  concurrence,  reported  to 
the  Secretary  of  War,  who,  responding  with  the  Presi- 
dent's assent,  took  occasion  again  to  repeat  the  command, 
"  Leave  Washington  entirely  secure." 70 

Immediately  after  General  McClellan  had,  with  part 
Df  his  troops,  embarked  for  the  Peninsula,  alarm  spread 
through  the  city  at  the  rumor  that  it  had  been  left  inade- 
quately guarded.  Such  neglect  of  orders,  particularly  in 
view  of  the  stress  laid  upon  them,  was  almost  incredi- 
ble. Nevertheless,  Secretary  Stan  ton  at  once  called  upon 
General  James  S.  Wadsworth,  Military  Governor  of  the 
District  of  Columbia,  to  make  a  report  of  the  forces 
left  under  his  command  for  its  defence.  In  reply,  Gen- 
eral Wadsworth  stated  that  he  had  19,000  available  men, 
most  of  them  "  new  and  imperfectly  disciplined."  About 
4500  of  these  were,  under  General  McClellan's  orders,  to 
be  sent  to  Manassas,  Warrenton,  and  Budd's  Ferry ;  while 
about  1500  were  to  join  certain  divisions,  on  their  way 
to  the  Peninsula.71  This  report,  together  with  a  formal 
opinion  secured  from  Adjutant-General  Thomas  and 
Major-General  Hitchcock,  military  adviser  of  the  War 
Department,  to  the  effect  that  the  force  was  "  entirely 
inadequate,"  and  that  the  President's  requirements  had 
"  not  been  fully  complied  with,"  was  laid  by  the  Secre- 
tary before  Mr.  Lincoln.72  Then  followed  an  anxious 
conference  at  the  War  Office  between  the  President  and 
the  chiefs  of  bureaus.  They  agreed  with  Mr.  Stanton  in 
the  conviction  that  the  Capital  was  not  safe.  At  the  con- 
clusion of  the  meeting,  the  Secretary,  under  instructions 
from  the  President,  retained  McDowell's  corps,  which 
belonged  to  McClellan's  army,  but  had  not  yet  left  for 
the  Peninsula.  This  command,  of  about  36,000  men,  con- 
sisting of  Franklin's,  McCall's,  and  King's  divisions,  was 
to  have  served  as  a  flanking  column.  The  withdrawal  of 


274       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

the  corps  from  the  campaign,  at  the  eleventh  hour,  was  a 
shock  to  General  McClellan,  who  regarded  the  part  as- 
signed to  it  as  vital  to  the  success  of  his  operations.  When 
the  news  of  this  change  in  his  circumstances  reached  him 
before  Yorktown,  he  at  once  —  to  borrow  a  phrase  from 
a  letter  to  his  wife  —  "  raised  an  awful  row."  73 

In  the  despatches  to  the  President  and  to  the  Secretary 
of  War  that  followed  one  another  in  close  succession,  the 
General  commanding  protested  against  the  action  of  the 
administration,  and  urgently  requested  that  at  least 
Franklin's  division  be  restored  to  his  command.  Then 
arose  the  quarrel  between  McClellan  and  his  superiors 
that  has  survived  the  principal  disputants.  The  last  word, 
in  fact,  has  not  yet  been  said ;  but  the  evidence  is  more 
than  sufficient  to  prove  that  the  commander  brought  this 
disappointment  upon  himself  by  his  neglect  of  the  Presi- 
dent's orders.  So  Mr.  Lincoln,  after  his  kindly  fashion, 
stated  to  General  McClellan,  whose  complaints,  however, 
that  he  had  not  been  properly  sustained  in  other  respects, 
were  entitled  to  consideration.  Persisting  in  his  appeals, 
he  finally  telegraphed  to  Secretary  Stanton :  — 

"  The  reconnoissance  to-day  proves  that  it  is  necessary 
to  invest  and  attack  Gloucester  Point.  Give  me  Franklin 
and  McCall's  divisions,  under  command  of  Franklin,  and 
I  will  at  once  undertake  it.  If  circumstances  of  which  I 
am  not  aware  make  it  impossible  for  you  to  send  me  two 
divisions  to  carry  out  this  final  plan  of  campaign,  I  will 
run  the  risk  and  hold  myself  responsible  for  the  results 
if  you  will  give  me  Franklin's  division.  If  you  still  con- 
fide in  my  judgment,  I  entreat  that  you  will  grant  this 
request.  The  fate  of  our  cause  depends  upon  it." 74 

This  extraordinary  message  brought  the  President  to 
the  War  Office  for  another  consultation.  The  reports  on 
file  there  showed  that  the  army  sent  to  the  Peninsula 
already  consisted  of  more  than  100,000  men.75  How 
greatly  it,  in  fact,  outnumbered  the  force  opposed  to  it 
was,  of  course,  not  known  until  some  time  afterward.76 


THE  CURBING   OF   STANTON     275 

But  General  McClellan's  tendency  to  underrate  his  own 
strength  and  to  exaggerate  that  of  the  enemy  may  have 
been  taken  into  the  account  by  the  Secretary  of  War,  who 
was  once  moved  to  say  of  him :  — 

"  If  he  had  a  million  men,  he  would  swear  the  enemy 
had  two  million,  and  then  he  would  sit  down  in  the  mud 
and  yell  for  three."  " 

At  the  conference,  Mr.  Stanton  insisted  that  General 
McClellan  did  not  need  the  troops  that  had  been  detached 
from  the  expedition,  and  that  they  could  not  even  be  em- 
ployed if  they  were  restored.  He  objected,  moreover,  to 
the  withdrawal  of  Franklin's  division  from  McDowell's 
corps,  on  the  ground  that  the  entire  force,  by  advancing 
over  the  shortest  land  route  toward  Richmond,  so  as  to 
keep  between  Washington  and  the  enemy,  could  aid  Gen- 
eral McClellan  while  protecting  the  Union  Capital.  This 
argument,  although  it  was  sustained  by  Adjutant-General 
Thomas,  Quartermaster-General  Meigs,  Major-General 
Hitchcock,  and  Brigadier-General  Ripley,  Chief  of  Ord- 
nance, failed  to  influence  the  President.  Anxious  to 
gratify  McClellan  and  to  give  him  all  the  support  avail- 
able, he  overruled  the  head  of  the  War  Department,  for 
the  second  time  in  the  history  of  the  Peninsular  campaign, 
and  directed  Franklin's  division  to  be  shipped  at  once  to 
the  Lower  Chesapeake. 

"  I  yielded  my  opinion  to  the  President's  order,"  wrote 
Mr.  Stanton  to  a  friend  ;  but  how  vigorously  the  order  was 
carried  out,  he  omitted  to  mention.  Before  our  Secretary 
slept  that  night  he  telegraphed  to  General  McClellan :  — 

"Franklin's  division  is  marching  to  Alexandria  to 
embark.  McCall's  will  be  sent  if  the  safety  of  this  city 
will  permit.  Inform  me  where  you  want  Franklin  to  land. 
He  will  embark  to-morrow  and  as  quickly  as  possible."  78 

Without  pursuing  the  narrative  of  the  hapless  opera- 
tions that  immediately  followed,  it  may  be  added  that 
when  the  troops,  so  persistently  pleaded  for  as  a  flanking 
column,  arrived  below  Yorktown,  they  floated  idly  in  their 


276       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

transports,  nearly  a  fortnight.  At  the  end  of  that  period, 
just  as  their  disembarkation  seemed  "  about  completed," 
the  besieged  enemy  was  found,  as  at  Manassas,  to  have 
vanished  from  the  scene. 

Two  mouths  of  fruitless  campaigning  on  the  Penin- 
sula ensued.  They  did  not  improve  Stanton's  opinion  of 
McClellan.  The  General,  moreover,  at  almost  every  step 
demanded  reinforcements  which  the  Secretary,  for  the 
most  part,  could  not  supply.  Each  fresh  disappointment 
intensified  McClellan's  bitterness  toward  the  administra- 
tion, and  toward  his  one-time  friend,  the  head  of  the  War 
Department,  in  particular.  This  feeling  manifested  itself 
in  violent  attacks  upon  Mr.  Stanton.  He  became  a  target 
for  the  abuse  of  the  General's  military  and  political  sym- 
pathizers, as  well  as  for  that  officer's  own  insubordinate 
faultfindings.  How  far  McClellan  carried  his  insolence 
may  be  gathered  from  the  message  that  he  despatched 
to  the  Secretary  of  War,  after  the  desperate  battle  of 
Gaines's  Mill.  It  closed  with :  — 

"I  know  that  a  few  thousand  more  men  would  have 
changed  this  battle  from  a  defeat  to  a  victory.  As  it  is, 
the  government  must  not  and  cannot  hold  me  responsible 
for  the  result.  I  feel  too  earnestly  to-night.  I  have  seen 
too  many  dead  and  wounded  comrades  to  feel  otherwise 
than  that  the  government  has  not  sustained  this  army.  If 
you  do  not  do  so  now,  the  game  is  lost.  If  I  save  this  army 
now,  I  tell  you  plainly  that  I  owe  no  thanks  to  you  or  to 
any  other  persons  in  Washington.  You  have  done  your 
best  to  sacrifice  this  army."  ra 

When  the  message  reached  the  military  telegraph 
bureau  of  the  War  Department,  Major  Thomas  T.  Eckert, 
the  officer  on  duty,  was  amazed  at  this  sharp  attack  upon 
Mr.  Stanton  and,  over  his  shoulder,  upon  the  President 
himself.  He  forthwith  laid  the  despatch  before  Colonel 
E.  S.  Sanford,  Military  Supervisor  of  Telegraphs,  who, 
exceeding  his  authority,  indignantly  struck  out  the  two 
closing  sentences.  Thus  mutilated,  a  copy  of  the  telegram 


THE  CURBING  OF   STANTON     277 

was  handed  to  the  Secretary  of  "War,  and  he  carried  it  to 
the  President.  Neither  of  them  knew  how  sharp  had  origi- 
nally been  the  sting  which  Colonel  Sanford's  blue  pencil 
left  but  partly  extracted.  Enough  of  the  accusation  against 
the  government  remained,  however,  to  have,  under  any 
other  administration,  cost  McClellan  his  command.  Yet 
Lincoln's  unparalleled  forbearance  was  equal  to  the  test. 
In  his  anxiety  for  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  he  lost  sight 
of  the  affront  offered  by  its  commander.  Not  so  with 
Stanton ;  though  moved  by  the  danger  to  send  the  offend- 
ing General  assurances  of  his  friendship  and  support,  he 
was  incapable  of  overlooking  such  an  insult.  He  had, 
indeed,  reached  a  state  of  mind  that  could  be  satisfied 
with  nothing  short  of  McClellan's  removal.  To  this  end, 
the  Secretary  of  War  joined  hands  in  a  powerful  coali- 
tion with  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  who  had  long 
before  lost  confidence  in  "  Little  Mac."  Together  they 
urged  the  President  to  recall  that  officer,  and  to  give 
Major-General  John  Pope,  commanding  the  recently  con- 
stituted Army  of  Virginia,  his  post.  Mr.  Lincoln  was 
not  prepared,  however,  for  so  drastic  a  step.  Instead  of 
removing  McClellan,  he  placed  him,  together  with  the 
other  commanders  in  the  field,  under  the  orders  of  a 
newly  commissioned  General-in-Chief,  Henry  W.  Halleck. 
This  appointment,  let  us  say  in  passing,  was  almost  as 
distasteful  to  our  truculent  war  minister  as  the  Presi- 
dent's refusal  to  dismiss  McClellan.  Stanton  and  Hal- 
leck cherished  a  mutual  dislike,  which  dated  from  their 
professional  encounters  before  the  war,  on  opposing  sides 
in  certain  of  the  California  Land  Cases.  The  Secretary 
is  said  to  have  "  used  some  pretty  strong  language  "  con- 
cerning Mr.  Lincoln's  selection,  when  it  was  announced  ;  ^ 
but  he  speedily  established  friendly  relations  with  the 
new  commander.  They  were  soon  in  entire  accord  about 
McClellan,  and  when  Halleck  cast  his  influence  into  the 
already  heavily  weighted  scale  of  that  officer's  declining 
fortunes,  the  President  yielded. 


27 8       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

Early  in  August,  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  was  recalled 
from  the  Peninsula  to  be  merged,  corps  by  corps,  in 
Pope's  forces  before  Washington.  General  McClellaii's 
chagrin  over  this  inglorious  close  to  his  campaign  was 
exceeded  only  by  the  keen  humiliation  that  followed. 
Stripped  of  all  but  a  nominal  authority,  we  find  him  at 
Alexandria  forwarding  his  beloved  troops  to  another  com- 
mander, and  begging,  in  vain,  for  the  privilege  of  joining 
them  on  the  battle-field.  Then  came  General  Pope's  de- 
feat at  Second  Bull  Run.  To  what  extent,  if  any,  that 
disaster  may  fairly  be  charged  to  the  tardiness  of  McClel- 
lan's  cooperation  remains  a  moot  point.  It  is  sufficient  for 
the  purposes  of  this  study  to  record  that  the  administra- 
tion, civil  as  well  as  military,  was,  at  the  time,  almost  a 
unit  in  deeming  him  partly  responsible.  The  Secretary 
of  War  became  especially  incensed  at  his  seeming  disin- 
clination to  support  Pope.  While  the  two  days'  conflict 
was  at  its  height,  Mr.  Stantou  had  prepared  a  letter  to 
the  President  recommending  General  McClellan's  imme- 
diate removal.  This  the  Secretary  had  laid  before  some 
of  his  colleagues  in  the  cabinet  for  their  signatures,  but 
its  language  was  obviously  too  harsh  even  for  their  angry 
mood.81  The  protest  was  accordingly  modified  to  read:  — 

"The  undersigned,  who  have  been  honored  with  your 
selection  as  a  part  of  your  confidential  advisers,  deeply 
impressed  with  our  great  responsibility  in  the  present 
crisis,  do  but  perform  a  painful  duty  in  declaring  to  you 
our  deliberate  opinion  that,  at  this  time,  it  is  not  safe  to 
entrust  to  Major- General  McClellan  the  command  of  any 
army  of  the  United  States.  And  we  hold  ourselves  ready, 
at  any  time,  to  explain  to  you  in  detail  the  reasons  upon 
which  this  opinion  is  founded."  ffi 

It  was  signed  by  Messrs.  Stanton,  Chase,  Smith,  and 
Bates.  Mr.  Blair  favored  McClellan ;  Mr.  Seward  hap- 
pened to  be  absent.  Mr.  Welles  had  declined  to  add  his 
name,  not  because  he  was  out  of  harmony  with  his  asso- 
ciates in  the  matter,  but  because  he  considered  the  man* 


THE  CURBING  OF  STANTON     279 

ner  of  their  proceeding  "improper  and  disrespectful  to 
the  President."83  This  objection,  as  well  as  the  promise 
made  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy  to  second  his  col- 
leagues, verbally,  at  the  next  cabinet  meeting,  had  caused 
them  to  withhold  the  paper.84  Whether  it  ever  came  to 
Mr.  Lincoln's  knowledge,  or  not,  has  been  left  in  doubt.85 
There  can  be  no  question,  however,  that  he  knew  how 
embittered  these  men  had  become  against  McClellan. 
Indeed,  the  President  himself  said  privately  concerning 
the  General :  — 

"  He  has  acted  badly  towards  Pope ;  he  really  wanted 
him  to  fail."88 

So  matters  stood  when  Bull  Run  became,  for  the  second 
time,  a  field  of  ill  omen  to  the  Union  arms,  and  Pope's 
routed  columns  reeled  back  toward  Washington. 

A  crisis  confronted  the  government.  Lee's  victorious 
army  was  said  to  be  pressing  close  upon  the  disorganized 
Federals,  as  they  poured  toward  the  city.  The  Capital 
seemed  lost.  Terror  and  confusion  reigned  on  all  sides. 
Halleck  was  unequal  to  the  emergency ;  Stanton,  prepar- 
ing for  the  flight  of  the  administration,  directed  all  sup- 
plies in  the  arsenal  to  be  shipped  to  New  York ;  Chase 
gave  orders  for  the  removal  of  the  money  in  the  Treasury 
to  the  same  place  ;  and  Pope,  as  he  neared  Washington, 
telegraphed,  "Unless  something  can  be  done  to  restore 
tone  to  this  army,  it  will  melt  away  before  you  know  it."87 
The  situation  called  for  masterly  action.  President  Lin- 
coln did  not  falter.  He  knew  that  there  was  but  one 
man  who  had  the  love,  as  well  as  the  confidence,  of  those 
defeated  troops  —  one  man  who  could  restore  them  to  dis- 
cipline speedily  enough  to  preserve  the  Capital.  Turning 
a  deaf  ear  to  the  public  clamor  against  McClellan,  setting 
aside  most  of  his  military  advisers,  and  deliberately  ignor- 
ing the  nearly  unanimous  wish  of  his  cabinet,  Mr.  Lincoln 
called  upon  the  General  to  take  command  of  the  routed 
forces,  as  they  reached  the  defences  of  Washington.  An. 
official  order  to  this  effect  was  issued  in  Secretary  Stan- 


280      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

ton's  name,  though  that  functionary  had  not  even  been 
consulted  in  the  matter.88  His  indignation  found  expres- 
sion at  a  cabinet  meeting,  on  the  day  of  the  appointment. 
"  Stanton  entered  the  council-room,"  reports  Secretary 
Welles,  "  a  few  moments  in  advance  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  and 
said,  with  great  excitement,  he  had  just  learned  from 
General  Halleck  that  the  President  had  placed  McClellan 
in  command  of  the  forces  in  Washington.  The  informa- 
tion was  surprising,  and,  in  view  of  the  prevailing  excite- 
ment against  that  officer,  alarming.  The  President  soon 
came  in,  and  in  answer  to  an  inquiry  from  Mr.  Chase, 
confirmed  what  Stanton  had  stated.  General  regret  was 
expressed,  and  Stanton,  with  some  feeling,  remarked  that 
no  order  to  that  effect  had  issued  from  the  War  Depart- 
ment. The  President  calmly,  but  with  some  emphasis, 
said  the  order  was  his,  and  he  would  be  responsible  for 
it  to  the  country." 

"  In  stating  what  he  had  done,"  proceeds  Mr.  Welles, 
"the  President  was  deliberate,  but  firm  and  decisive. 
His  language  and  manner  were  kind  and  affectionate, 
especially  toward  two  of  the  members  who  were  greatly 
disturbed ;  but  every  person  present  felt  that  he  was 
truly  the  chief,  and  every  one  knew  his  decision,  though 
mildly  expressed,  was  as  fixed  and  unalterable  as  if  given 
out  with  the  imperious  command  and  determined  will  of 
Andrew  Jackson."89 

A  spirited  discussion  ensued.  Mr.  Lincoln  gave  the 
reasons  for  his  course.  The  cabinet  disapproved.  Even 
Postmaster-General  Blair,  McClellan's  friend,  appears  to 
have  reached  the  conclusion  that  the  General  could  not 
then  be  wisely  trusted  with  the  chief  command.  Of  course, 
the  most  strenuous  objections  came  from  the  two  minis- 
ters who  had  led  the  opposition.  Mr.  Chase  expressed 
apprehensions  that  the  reinstatement  of  McClellan  would 
prove  to  be  a  national  calamity.  He  went  so  far  as  to 
declare  the  appointment  "  equivalent  to  giving  Washing- 
ton to  the  rebels."90  And  Mr.  Stanton's  bitterness,  ac- 


THE   CURBING  OF   STANTON      281 

cording  to  one  of  his  fellow  Secretaries,  can  scarcely  be 
conceived.91  Their  combined  onslaught  at  last  moved  the 
President  to  say,  as  he  did  to  Seward's  senatorial  foes, 
that  he  would  gladly  resign  his  place,  but  that  he  could 
not  rescind  the  order.  Then  this  remarkable  meeting 
closed  —  closed  as  it  had  begun  —  with  Abraham  Lincoln 
master  of  the  situation.  The  entire  cabinet  acquiesced  in 
his  decision.  Even  the  two  aggressive  leaders,  who  had 
at  one  point  been  prepared  to  make  McClellan's  dismissal 
the  price  of  their  further  service,  bowed  to  the  inevita- 
ble. The  object  of  their  hostility  not  only  retained  his 
command  in  the  defences  of  the  Capital,  but  what  is 
more,  when  the  reorganized  army  marched  out  a  few 
days  thereafter,  on  the  Antietam  campaign,  he  was  still 
at  its  head.  Secretary  Stanton,  let  us  add,  disappointed 
and  dispirited  as  he  is  said  to  have  been,  gave  General 
McClellan,  none  the  less,  his  loyal  support. 

About  two  years  thereafter  was  enacted  another  sig- 
nificant cabinet  scene,  when  the  high-strung  Stanton 
again  tried  to  force  the  President's  hand.  The  second 
occasion,  like  the  first,  was  brought  about,  in  a  way,  by  a 
Confederate  advance  upon  the  Capital,  and  by  the  efforts 
of  the  Secretary  to  secure  the  removal  of  an  obnoxious 
officer.  This  time,  no  less  a  person  than  one  of  his 
own  colleagues,  Montgomery  Blair,  had  been  marked  for 
sacrifice.  The  Postmaster-General's  antagonisms  in  the 
cabinet,  it  should  be  remembered,  were  not  limited  to 
Mr.  Stanton.  Secretary  Chase,  during  his  entire  period 
—  recently  concluded  —  at  the  head  of  the  Treasury  De- 
partment, had  found  Mr.  Blair,  as  we  have  seen,  to  be 
a  thorn  in  his  side ;  while  the  Postmaster-General's  per- 
sonal aggressiveness,  as  well  as  his  conservative  attitude 
toward  slavery  and  reconstruction,  had  led  to  friction 
with  still  other  associates.  They  might  all,  perhaps,  have 
agreed  with  that  newspaper  correspondent  who  called 
him  "the  stormy  petrel"  of  the  administration.  Mr. 
Blair  had  managed,  moreover,  to  arouse  the  uncompro' 


282       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

raising  hostility  of  Radical  Republicans  throughout  the 
country.  Their  leaders  had  gone  so  far  as  to  exact  from 
the  convention  that  renominated  Mr.  Lincoln,  early  in 
June,  1864,  a  resolution  which,  counseling  harmony  in 
the  cabinet,  asked  by  unmistakable  implication  for  the 
dismissal  of  the  man  in  the  Post  Office.92  But  the  Pre- 
sident made  no  sign  of  compliance.  He  was  fond  of 
Montgomery  Blair,  appreciative  of  his  ability,  and  mind- 
ful of  the  obligations  under  which  the  Blair  family  had 
placed  the  Union  cause,  during  the  early  days  of  the 
war.  In  the  midst  of  this  clamor,  however,  for  the  Post- 
master-General's removal,  he  himself  furnished  an  addi- 
tional provocation,  which  Stanton  was  not  slow  to  seize. 
When  the  Confederates,  on  their  famous  raid  under 
Early,  withdrew  from  before  Washington,  they  plundered 
and  burned  the  residence  of  Mr.  Blair,  in  the  suburbs. 
His  misfortune,  involving  the  destruction  of  a  valuable 
library,  stirred  him  —  it  was  alleged  —  to  severe  criticism 
of  the  officers  in  command  about  the  Capital.  This  Gen- 
eral Halleck  resented.  He  sent  an  indignant  letter  to 
Secretary  Stanton :  — 

"  It  should  be  known,"  wrote  the  chief  of  staff, 
"  whether  such  wholesale  denouncement  and  accusation 
by  a  member  of  the  cabinet  receives  the  sanction  and 
approbation  of  the  President  of  the  United  States.  If 
so,  the  names  of  the  officers  accused  should  be  stricken 
from  the  rolls  of  the  Army ;  if  not,  it  is  due  to  the  honor 
of  the  accused  that  the  slanderer  should  be  dismissed 
from  the  cabinet."  M 

This  communication  Mr.  Stanton  forwarded,  with  a 
note,  to  the  President,  who  addressed  his  reply  to  the 
Secretary  of  War.  Mr.  Lincoln's  letter,  after  summarizing 
General  Halleck's  charges,  read  :  — 

"  Whether  the  remarks  were  really  made  I  do  not  know, 
nor  do  I  suppose  such  knowledge  is  necessary  to  a  correct 
response.  If  they  were  made,  I  do  not  approve  them  ;  and 
yet,  under  the  circumstances,  I  would  not  dismiss  a  meuv 


THE   CURBING   OF   STANTON     283 

ber  of  the  cabinet  therefor.  I  do  not  consider  what  may 
have  been  hastily  said  in  a  moment  of  vexation  at  so 
severe  a  loss  is  sufficient  ground  for  so  grave  a  step.  Be- 
sides this,  truth  is  generally  the  best  vindication  against 
slander.  I  propose  continuing  to  be  myself  the  judge  as 
to  when  a  member  of  the  cabinet  shall  be  dismissed."  M 

So  masterful  a  treatment  of  the  matter  might  have 
sufficed,  but  the  President  thought  it  was  time  to  assert 
himself  in  another  direction.  At  the  next  cabinet  meet- 
ing he  read  to  his  astonished  councilors  the  following 
curt  lecture :  — 

"  I  must  myself  be  the  judge  how  long  to  retain  in  and 
when  to  remove  any  of  you  from  his  position.  It  would 
greatly  pain  me  to  discover  any  of  you  endeavoring  to 
procure  another's  removal,  or  in  any  way  to  prejudice 
him  before  the  public.  Such  endeavor  would  be  a  wrong 
to  me,  and,  much  worse,  a  wrong  to  the  country.  My  wish 
is  that  on  this  subject  no  remark  be  made  nor  question 
asked  by  any  of  you,  here  or  elsewhere,  now  or  here- 
after." * 

A  schoolmaster  reprimanding  a  class  of  unruly  boys 
could  hardly  have  been  more  peremptory.  Certainly,  no 
President  ever  taught  his  cabinet  its  place  in  language 
that  rang  so  true  to  the  tone  of  absolute  authority.96 

One  of  these  ministers  especially  needed  a  sharp  word 
now  and  then.  Secretary  Stanton's  temperament,  as  we 
have  seen,  rendered  him  anything  but  an  easy  instrument 
in  any  man's  hand.  His  very  faults  partook  of  the  rugged 
strength  which,  viewed  at  this  distance,  makes  him  stand 
out  as  the  Titan  of  Lincoln's  cabinet.  That  the  President 
controlled  so  turbulent  a  force  without  sacrificing  aught 
of  its  energy  was  perhaps  his  highest  achievement  in  the 
field  of  mastership.  This  was  due,  primarily,  of  course,  to 
his  insight  into  Stanton's  character.  Few  men,  if  any,  had 
fathomed  as  truly  the  sterling  qualities  that  lay  beneath 
the  failings  of  the  great  Secretary.  For  the  real  Stanton 
revealed  himself  to  the  President  in  the  daily  —  at  times 


LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

hourly — meetings  imposed  upon  them  by  the  require- 
ments of  the  war.  Together  they  bore  the  anxieties  and 
shared  the  joys  of  the  struggle.  Their  cooperation  in  the 
absorbing  work  to  which  both  had  dedicated  themselves 
established  between  the  men,  dissimilar  as  they  were  by 
nature,  a  bond  of  sympathy  which  even  Stanton's  headi- 
ness  could  not  destroy.  Indeed,  Mr.  Lincoln,  treating 
the  Secretary  somewhat  as  a  parent  would  a  talented  but 
high-strung  child,  —  now  humoring,  now  commanding, — 
appears  to  have  risen  above  even  a  shadow  of  personal 
resentment,  and  to  have  overlooked  an  occasional  opposi- 
tion that,  however  violent  might  have  been  its  outbursts, 
always  yielded  in  the  end  to  his  authority.  His  esteem 
for  Mr.  Stanton  not  only  suffered  no  impairment  in  these 
passages  at  arms,  but  stranger  still,  it  ripened  into  affec- 
tion. The  President's  protection  went  out  unasked  to  the 
Secretary  of  War,  as  it  did  to  his  other  councilors.  Mr. 
Stanton's  enemies  —  and  he  had  a  choice  assortment  of 
them  —  lost  no  opportunity  for  assailing  him.  When  he 
was  attacked  publicly  because  of  certain  administrative 
acts,  Mr.  Lincoln,  stepping  between  him  and  his  critics, 
assumed  the  responsibility.  When  his  detractors  sought 
to  undermine  him  privately  with  the  President,  they 
made  no  headway.  At  times,  in  fact,  they  found  a  tiger 
while  beating  the  jungle  for  a  deer,  as  happened  to  one 
who  came  with  severe  denunciations  against  the  Secre- 
tary. "  Go  home,  my  friend,"  interrupted  Mr.  Lincoln, 
"  and  read  attentively  the  tenth  verse  of  the  thirtieth 
chapter  of  Proverbs."97  If  the  man  turned  to  the  text, 
he  read: — 

"  Accuse  not  a  servant  unto  his  master,  lest  he  curse 
thee,  and  thou  be  found  guilty." 

No  better  fate  attended  the  efforts  that  were  confessedly 
made  to  get  Mr.  Stanton  out  of  the  cabinet.  So  strong 
became  the  pressure  in  this  direction  that  it  aroused 
anxiety  among  his  supporters.  One  of  them,  Judge  E. 
K.  Hoar,  discussing  cabinet  appointments  for  the  second 


THE   CURBING  OF   ST ANTON      285 

administration,  in  November  1864,  said  to  the  Presi- 
dent :  — 

"  I  hope,  whatever  is  done,  that  Stanton  will  be  retained 
in  his  position  until  the  war  is  over." 

To  which  Lincoln  replied  :  — 

"  Mr.  Stanton  has  excellent  qualities,  and  he  has  his 
defects.  Folks  come  up  here  and  tell  me  that  there  are  a 
great  many  men  in  the  country  who  have  all  Stanton's 
excellent  qualities  without  his  defects.  All  I  have  to 
say  is,  I  have  n't  met  'em !  I  don't  know  'em !  I  wish  I 
did!"98 

The  answer  makes  clear  why  the  foes  who  sought  the 
minister's  overthrow,  and  the  friends  who  urged  his 
elevation  to  the  Supreme  Court  bench,  on  the  death  of 
Chief  Justice  Taney,  were  alike  unsuccessful.  When  this 
promotion  was  advocated  by  Bishop  Simpson,  the  Presi- 
dent replied :  — 

"  If  you  will  find  me  another  Secretary  of  War  like 
him,  I  will  gladly  appoint  him."  " 

But  Mr.  Stanton  himself  contemplated  a  change.  Bend- 
ing at  that  very  time  under  the  terrible  strain  of  his 
exertions,  he  looked  forward  longingly  to  a  release  from 
his  place  in  the  cabinet.  When  the  Surgeon-General, 
alarmed  over  his  condition,  urged  him  to  take  a  furlough, 
he  said :  — 

"  Barnes,  keep  me  alive  till  this  rebellion  is  over,  and 
then  I  will  take  a  rest  —  a  long  one,  perhaps."  10° 

In  a  similar  strain,  after  several  days  on  a  bed  of  sick- 
ness, he  wrote  to  Mr.  Chase :  — 

"  I  am  better  now  and  again  at  work,  but  with  feeble 
and  broken  health,  that  can  only  be  restored  by  absolute 
rest  from  all  labor  and  care.  This  I  long  for,  and  hope 
soon  to  have.  Our  cause  is  now,  I  hope,  beyond  all  dan- 
ger, and  when  Grant  goes  into  Richmond  my  task  is 
ended.  To  you  and  others  it  will  remain  to  secure  the 
fruits  of  victory."  m 

Upon  the  announcement,  in  the  following  spring,  that 


a86       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

Lee  was  about  to  surrender,  Mr.  Stanton  accordingly  ten- 
dered his  resignation.  A  letter  which  he  handed  to  the 
President  took  the  ground  that  this  event  would  virtu- 
ally end  the  war,  and  leave  him  free  —  with  his  work 
done  —  to  give  up  his  portfolio.  Mr.  Lincoln  is  reported 
to  have  been  greatly  moved.  Tearing  the  resignation  in 
pieces,  and  throwing  his  arms  about  the  Secretary,  he 
said,  according  to  Mr.  Carpenter,  who  tells  the  story  :  — 

"  Stanton,  you  have  been  a  good  friend  and  a  faithful 
public  servant ;  and  it  is  not  for  you  to  say  when  you  will 
no  longer  be  needed  here."  102 

The  Secretary  himself  has  left  an  account  of  the  scene. 
He  relates  how  the  President,  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  put 
his  hands  on  the  other's  shoulders,  and  said :  — 

"  Stanton,  you  cannot  go.  Reconstruction  is  more  diffi- 
cult and  dangerous  than  construction  or  destruction.  You 
have  been  our  main  reliance ;  you  must  help  us  through 
the  final  act.  The  bag  is  filled.  It  must  be  tied,  and  tied 
securely.  Some  knots  slip ;  yours  do  not.  You  under- 
stand the  situation  better  than  anybody  else,  and  it  is 
my  wish  and  the  country's  that  you  remain."  103 

What  could  be  answered  to  such  an  appeal  ?  The  Secre- 
tary of  War  once  again  bowed  before  a  will  stronger  than 
his  own,  and  cheerfully  resumed  his  duties. 

There  was  something  more  than  mere  obedience  in  this 
submission.  The  minister's  heart  had  been  touched  as 
well  as  the  President's.  Stanton's  distrust  —  even  con- 
tempt —  of  Lincoln  in  1861,  had  given  way,  by  1865,  to 
entirely  different  sentiments.  Like  his  associates  in  the 
cabinet,  with  possibly  one  exception,  the  Secretary  of 
War  had  at  last  correctly  gauged  the  President's  intellec- 
tual and  moral  force.  That  this  force,  when  exerted  to 
the  full,  was  well-nigh  irresistible,  he  had,  as  we  know, 
painfully  learned  by  repeated  but  unsuccessful  strivings 
to  get  his  own  way.  No  one  had  ever  so  worsted  Edwin 
M.  Stanton.  He  was  outclassed.  With  his  increasing 
respect  for  Mr.  Lincoln's  power  came,  naturally  enough, 


THE   CURBING   OF  STANTON      287 

something  like  a  fair  appreciation  of  the  President's 
lofty  character.  Such  magnanimity,  devotion  to  duty, 
and  homely  sincerity  could  have  but  one  effect  upon  a 
man  of  Stanton's  intense  nature.  He  began  with  reviling 
Lincoln,  he  ended  with  loving  him. 

Among  the  friends  who  desired  the  President's  reelec- 
tion, none  labored  more  loyally  to  that  end  than  Mr. 
Stanton.  Every  available  resource  of  the  War  Depart- 
ment was  employed  in  Mr.  Lincoln's  interest.  So  earnest 
did  the  Secretary  grow  that  on  one  occasion  —  Mr.  Dana 
tells  us  —  he  became  greatly  vexed  at  the  President's 
seeming  indifference  as  to  the  result.104  Still,  Mr.  Lincoln, 
as  we  know,  was  triumphantly  reflected.  He  had  entered 
upon  his  second  term,  when  Stanton's  concern  took  an- 
other form  —  not  new,  but  more  marked  than  ever  before, 
He  became  anxious  for  the  President's  personal  safety. 
This  was  especially  so  while  Mr.  Lincoln  was  on  his 
Eichmond  jaunt.  When  he  telegraphed  to  the  Secretary 
of  War  that  he  was  about  to  visit  Petersburg,  which 
had  just  been  evacuated,  Mr.  Stanton  immediately  re- 
plied :  — 

"  Allow  me  respectfully  to  ask  you  to  consider  whether 
you  ought  to  expose  the  nation  to  the  consequence  of  any 
disaster  to  yourself  in  the  pursuit  of  a  treacherous  and 
dangerous  enemy  like  the  rebel  army.  If  it  was  a  ques- 
tion concerning  yourself  only,  I  should  not  presume  to 
say  a  word.  Commanding  generals  are  in  the  line  of  their 
duty  in  running  such  risks ;  but  is  the  political  head  of 
a  nation  in  the  same  condition  ?  " 105 

Nevertheless,  the  President  continued  his  excursion  into 
Confederate  territory ;  but  he  despatched  thanks  to  the 
Secretary,  and  promised  :  — 

"  I  will  take  care  of  myself."  106 

Eleven  days  later,  that  promise  went  by  default.  A 
capricious  fate,  which  suffered  him  to  walk  the  streets  of 
an  enemy's  Capital  unharmed,  reached  him  in  his  own 
Washington ;  and  Abraham  Lincoln  fell,  wounded  to 


288       LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

death  by  John  Wilkes  Booth.  A  notable  group  watched 
around  the  bed  on  which  he  breathed  his  last.  Among 
all  the  public  men  in  the  sorrowing  company,  no  grief  was 
keener  than  that  of  his  iron  war  minister.  None  of  them 
had  tested,  as  Edwin  M.  Stanton  had,  the  extraordinary 
resources  of  the  stricken  chief.  It  was  fitting,  therefore, 
that  he,  as  "  past  the  strong  heroic  soul  away,"  should 
pronounce  its  eulogy :  — 

"  There  lies  the  most  perfect  ruler  of  men  the  world 
has  ever  seen."  107 


CHAPTER  VII 
HOW  THE  PATHFINDER  LOST  THE  TRAIL 

AMONG  the  public  men  who,  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil 
War,  offered  their  services  to  the  government,  none  was 
more  warmly  welcomed  than  Colonel  John  Charles  Fre- 
mont. In  him  seemed  to  be  happily  combined  two  ele- 
ments which  the  administration  then  greatly  valued  — 
political  influence  and  military  skill.  His  exploits  as  the 
"  Pathfinder  "  who  had  conducted  five  exploring  expedi- 
tions through  the  wilds  of  the  far  West,  no  less  than  his 
splendid  canvass  in  1856  as  the  first  national  standard- 
bearer  of  the  Republican  Party,  singled  him  out  for  high 
command.  Indeed,  he  was  looked  upon  by  many  of  his 
fellow  countrymen  as  an  ideal  leader,  for  he  brought  to 
the  Union  cause  what  animated  few  of  its  captains  —  the 
inspiration  that  springs  from  a  romantic  career. 

Fremont  inherited  through  his  father,  a  French  refugee, 
the  love  of  adventure.  He  was  born,  in  fact,  on  one  of 
several  expeditions  which  his  parents  made  among  the 
southern  Indians  ; 1  and  the  untimely  death  of  that  father, 
a  few  years  thereafter,  was  due  to  exposure  during  a  for- 
est excursion.  At  school  the  boy  evinced  talents  of  a  high 
order,  yet  there  were  early  indications  of  a  restive  dispo- 
sition. His  formal  education  came  to  a  sudden  stop  upon 
his  expulsion  from  the  college  in  Charleston,  S.  C.,  as  he 
himself  narrates,  "  for  continued  disregard  of  discipline." 
This  somewhat  sobered  him,  and  years  of  earnest  labor 
ensued.  Teaching  school  at  home  in  Charleston,  cruising 
as  an  instructor  of  mathematics  on  a  United  States  sloop 
of  war,  pursuing  scientific  studies,  making  railroad  sur- 
veys among  the  Tennessee  mountains,.. and  taking  part  in 


290      LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

a  military  reconnoissance  of  the  Cherokee  country,  he 
acquired  the  experience  that  led  to  his  appointment  as 
second  lieutenant  in  the  United  States  Topographical 
Corps.  Then  followed  government  explorations  of  the 
region  lying  between  the  Mississippi  and  the  Missouri 
rivers,  in  which  the  young  officer  served  under  Nicollet, 
the  distinguished  French  scientist. 

While  at  work  in  Washington  upon  a  report  of  these 
expeditions,  Fremont  fell  in  love  with  Jessie  Ann  Benton, 
the  gifted  daughter  of  the  Senator  from  Missouri.  The 
young  lady  smiled  upon  the  lieutenant's  suit,  but  her 
parents  were  less  cordial.  So  Fremont,  displaying  charac- 
teristic dash  and  impatience  of  restraint,  eloped  with  her. 
This  marriage  has  been  described  by  a  not  too  friendly 
critic  as  "  the  most  brilliant  achievement  of  his  life."  It 
certainly  exerted  a  far-reaching  influence  upon  the  young 
subaltern's  fortunes.  Mrs.  Fremont,  a  model  of  wifely 
devotion,  was  destined  to  share  her  husband's  aspirations, 
in  a  notable  degree ;  but  what  was  of  greater  immediate 
importance  —  his  new  relationship  to  her  father,  together 
with  his  tastes  and  qualifications,  fitted  him  providentially, 
as  it  were,  into  Senator  Benton's  long-cherished  dream  of 
western  expansion.  Through  that  statesman's  influence, 
Lieutenant  Fremont  was  commissioned  to  make  his  first 
exploration  of  the  extensive  and  practically  unknown 
country  beyond  the  Missouri  River.  Four  great  expedi- 
tions to  the  Pacific  slope  followed.  They  brought  Fremont 
international  renown.  His  simple,  straightforward  reports, 
wherein  he  told 

"  Of  moving  accidents  by  flood  and  field, 


Of  antres  vast,  and  deserts  wild, 

Rough  quarries,  rocks,  and  hills  whose  heads  touch  heaven," 

Charmed  admirers  of  the  romantic  wherever  these  widely 
scattered  narratives  were  read.  Not  less  enthusiastic  were 
eminent  scientists  of  the  day  over  the  precision  and 
variety  of  his  contributions  to  our  knowledge  of  this 


THE   PATHFINDER  291 

newly  unfolded  wonderland  ;  and  so  serviceable,  withal, 
were  his  observations  that  caravan  after  caravan  of  west- 
ern emigrants  laid  its  course  across  the  prairies  according 
to  his  charts. 

Fremont  was  not  merely  a  finder  of  paths.  On  the  far 
side  of  his  adventures  he  also  found  military  and  political 
distinction.  Arriving  in  the  Mexican  province  of  Cali- 
fornia, on  the  third  exploring  expedition,  while  a  revolu- 
tion was  in  progress,  he  played  a  prominent  role  among 
the  dramatic  scenes  which  culminated  in  the  winning  of 
the  country  for  the  United  States.  Not  less  spectacular 
were  other  incidents  that  presently  crowded  upon  one 
another  in  kaleidoscopic  succession.  Lieutenant-Colonel 
Fremont  —  he  had  risen  to  that  rank  —  acted,  for  a  brief 
period,  as  military  commandant  of  the  conquered  territory. 
Becoming  involved  in  a  conflict  for  authority  on  the  coast, 
between  General  Kearney  and  Commodore  Stockton,  he 
was  convicted  by  court-martial  of  mutiny,  disobedience  of 
the  lawful  command  of  a  superior  officer,  and  conduct 
prejudicial  to  good  order  and  military  discipline.  A  sen- 
tence of  dismissal  from  the  army  followed.  But,  in  view 
of  his  valuable  services,  of  the  extenuating  circumstances, 
and  of  a  recommendation  for  clemency  by  a  majority  of 
the  court,  President  Polk,  although  he  approved  of  the 
findings  as  to  the  second  and  third  charges,  remitted  the 
penalty.  Whereupon  Colonel  Fremont,  with  popular  sym- 
pathy on  his  side,  resigned.  Presently  came  the  announce- 
ment that  gold  had  been  discovered  in  the  new  possessions. 
California,  entering  the  Union,  elected  Fremont  its  first 
Senator  ;  and,  as  if  nothing  might  be  lacking  to  complete 
the  marvelous  story,  mines  of  apparently  fabulous  value 
were  found  on  a  grant  which  had  been  bought  by  him  a 
year  before  Sutter's  tail-race  yielded  up  its  golden  secret. 
At  the  proper  moment,  moreover,  though  a  southerner 
by  birth  and  education,  he  declared  himself  to  be  a  hater 
of  slavery.  That  such  a  career  should  appeal  to  the  pop- 
ular imagination  was  inevitable.  It  presented  so  strong  a 


292       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

promise  of  gallant  leadership  that  the  Republican  National 
Convention  of  1856  nominated  Colonel  Fremont  for  the 
presidency.2  Having  served  but  part  of  a  short  term  in 
the  Senate,  he  was  practically  untried  in  statesmanship. 
The  absence,  however,  of  a  political  record  —  that  fre- 
quent bugbear  of  public  men  —  rendered  him,  then,  pecul- 
iarly available  as  the  nominee  of  a  party  in  process  of 
formation  from  the  remains  of  many  parties ;  while  his 
pronounced  anti-slavery  views  supplied  sufficient  common 
ground  on  which  these  not  entirely  harmonious  sections 
of  the  young  organization  could  make  their  first  vigorous 
fight  for  freedom.  "  Free  speech,  free  press,  free  soil, 
freemen,  Fremont,  and  victory !  "  was  a  favorite  slogan, 
in  the  North,  throughout  that  stirring  campaign.  The 
Republicans  were  defeated,  but  by  so  narrow  a  margin  in 
some  quarters  that  all  signs  gave  promise  of  success  within 
the  near  future.  Their  electors  had  carried  eleven  States  ; 
and  their  popular  vote,  aided  by  the  Fillmore  ballots,  had 
left  Buchanan  a  minority  President.  To  Fremont  largely 
went  the  credit  of  having  made  this  breach  in  the  Demo- 
cratic columns.  Long  after  the  din  of  that  canvass  had 
ceased,  he  was  looked  upon  with  a  certain  sentimental 
regard  by  many  of  those  who  had  worked  and  marched 
and  sung  and  voted  for  him  with  so  much  enthusiasm. 

One  of  these  supporters  was  Abraham  Lincoln.  Though 
the  candidate  had  not  been  his  first  choice  for  the  nomi- 
nation, he  had  labored  in  Illinois,  with  voice  and  pen,  at 
the  head  of  the  Republican  electoral  ticket,  for  FremontV 
election.  Four  years  later,  when  Lincoln  himself  won  th 
presidency,  it  was  his  purpose  to  find  some  appropriate 
station  under  his  administration  for  the  leader  whom  he 
had  so  zealously  served.  Fremont  was  talked  of  for  a  place 
in  the  cabinet,  and  then  for  a  first-class  foreign  mission. 
The  President  had  finally  decided  upon  him  as  Minister 
to  France,  but  in  deference  to  Secretary  Seward's  plans,  the 
appointment  was  not  made.  So  it  happened  that  when  the 
beginning  of  the  Civil  War  found  Colonel  Fremont  abroad, 


THE   PATHFINDER  293 

he  was  still  a  private  citizen.  Hastening  back  to  this  coun- 
try, he  received  from  Mr.  Lincoln  the  highest  military 
commission  within  the  President's  gift  —  that  of  Major- 
General  in  the  regular  army;  and  on  July  3, 1861,  he  was 
assigned  to  the  command  of  the  Western  Department.3 

The  appointment  was  in  accordance  with  Fremont's  own 
preference.  It  was  the  most  extensive  and,  as  he  believed, 
the  most  important  department  in  the  service.4  It  compre- 
hended, together  with  Illinois  and  New  Mexico,  all  the 
country  west  of  the  Mississippi  as  far  as  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains ;  but  this,  unfortunately,  was  not  to  be  the  West  of 
our  explorer's  experience  —  the  West  of  prairie,  forest,  and 
canon,  of  Indian  stalking  and  Mexican  skirmishing.  The 
scene  of  action  now  lay,  for  the  most  part,  in  the  Border 
Slave  State  of  Missouri,  where  the  intrigues  and  pitfalls  of 
party  strife  were  more  to  be  dreaded  than  the  hardships 
or  dangers  of  Fremont's  early  days.  His  new  path  —  to 
use  his  own  language  —  "  led  out  from  among  the  grand 
and  lovely  features  of  nature,  and  its  pure  and  wholesome 
air,  into  the  poisoned  atmosphere  and  jarring  circumstances 
of  conflict  among  men,  made  subtle  and  malignant  by 
clashing  interests." 5  Missouri  was,  in  fact,  already,  to  a 
certain  extent,  the  center  of  those  political  complications 
which  made  it  one  of  the  vexatious  problems  of  the  war. 
Governor  Jackson  and  Lieutenant-Governor  Reynolds, 
supported  by  the  General  Assembly,  had  committed  the 
State,  as  far  as  they  could,  to  secession.  A  convention,  on 
the  other  hand,  summoned  by  the  legislature  with  the  ex- 
pectation that  it  would  complete  their  work,  had  remained 
loyal  to  the  Federal  government,  by  a  strong  majority. 
This  loyalty,  however,  was  not  without  important  reserva- 
tions ;  for  it  actuated  patriots  holding  every  shade  of 
opinion,  from  Radicals,  who  would  have  no  Union  with- 
out immediate  emancipation,  to  ultra-Conservatives,  who 
demanded  that  slavery  and  the  Union  be  saved  together. 
Their  "pestilent  factional  quarrel,"  as  Mr.  Lincoln  once 
impatiently  termed  it,  gave  him  more  trouble  in  the  State 


294       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

than  the  enemy.  And  how  bitter  this  antagonism  became 
may  be  inferred  from  the  President's  remark,  "  Either 
party  would  rather  see  the  defeat  of  their  adversary  than 
that  of  Jefferson  Davis."  Yet  these  extreme  partisans 
and  the  other  Unionists,  who  differed  from  them  in  this 
or  that  particular,  had  one  point  of  agreement  —  they 
all  desired  the  success  of  the  Federal  cause.  To  combine 
such  warring  elements  into  an  effective  force  against  a 
common  foe,  was  a  problem  for  a  statesman  rather  than 
for  a  soldier.  It  called  for  wisdom  and  administrative 
skill  of  a  type  so  rare  that  we  may  well  stop  here  to 
inquire  more  closely  into  the  character  of  the  man  who 
was  to  undertake  the  task. 

Fremont's  personality  was  not  less  romantic  than  the 
story  of  his  life.  Moving  in  a  material  age,  among  practi- 
cal matter-of-fact  men,  he  exhaled,  as  it  were,  an  atmos- 
phere of  bygone  chivalry.  The  slender,  well-knit  frame, 
with  its  alertness  of  action  and  grace  of  bearing,  could 
have  belonged  only  to  one  who  had  spent  many  of  his 
adult  years  in  the  saddle,  close  to  nature.  He  was  slightly 
above  the  medium  height,  but  his  habitual  dignity  of  car- 
riage made  him  seem  taller  ;  just  as  a  full  beard  and  long 
curling  brown  hair  streaked  with  gray  lent  to  his  dreamy 
countenance  an  additional  touch  of  the  picturesque.  The 
handsome  weather-browned  face,  with  its  high  forehead, 
deep  blue  eyes,  and  aquiline  nose,  gave  index  of  mental 
vigor.  What  Fremont  had  done,  however,  more  than  what 
he  looked,  was  stamped  upon  the  world's  valuation  of  him. 
His  achievements  as  an  explorer  had  called  for  so  many 
manifestations  of  pluck,  dash,  self-reliance,  energy,  and 
perseverance  that,  in  the  popular  fancy,  he  became  invested 
with  qualities  well-nigh  heroic.  Nor  did  the  man's  intel- 
lectual accomplishments  appeal  less  to  the  respect  of  edu- 
cated people.  His  knowledge  of  the  sciences  rendered  him 
a  unique  figure  in  politics.  He  spoke  French  and  Span- 
ish fluently,  while  his  command  of  the  English  language, 
in  speech  no  less  than  in  writing,  was  scholarly.  That  he 


THE   PATHFINDER  295 

owed  this  culture  largely  to  his  own  efforts  is  the  more 
surprising,  as  it  was  accompanied  by  a  refinement  of 
manner  to  which  our  so-called  self-made  men  are,  for  the 
most  part,  strangers.  Courtly  in  demeanor,  and  amiable 
withal,  he  generally  exercised  a  certain  personal  fascina- 
tion over  those  who  came  into  relations  with  him.  But 
this  power  to  attract  men  was,  unfortunately,  accompanied 
by  no  nice  discernment  into  the  characters  of  his  admirers. 
Accordingly,  we  find  Fremont,  from  time  to  time,  sur- 
rounded by  followers  who  were  as  unscrupulous  in  their 
designs  as  they  were  unblushing  in  their  flattery.  Vanity 
and  ambition  —  twin  products  of  such  influences  —  colored 
the  visions  in  which  his  imagination  abounded.  He  chafed 
under  authority  at  mature  age,  hardly  less  than  during 
the  days  of  his  impetuous  youth.  In  fact,  a  certain  spirit 
of  insubordination  was  the  most  conspicuous  blemish  of 
this  otherwise  amiable  character.  Like  your  true  knight- 
errant,  moreover,  Fremont  did  not  hesitate,  on  occasion, 
to  be  a  law  unto  himself ;  and  still  further  recalling  the 
romantic  ideal,  he  presently  revealed  a  strong  distaste  for 
the  details  of  administrative  affairs.  Nor  was  he  lacking, 
as  we  shall  see,  in  these  respects  only.  When  confronted 
by  important  questions  that  required  a  tactful,  sagacious 
handling  of  things  as  they  were,  or  a  comprehensive  grasp 
of  things  as  they  should  be,  he  was  destined  to  prove  pain- 
fully ineffective.  What  had  served  for  brilliant  leadership 
in  the  limited  field  of  western  exploration,  hardly  met  the 
requirements  of  a  departmental  command  on  the  larger 
theater  of  our  Civil  War.  In  brief,  though  the  glamour 
that  enveloped  him  had  concealed  the  fact,  Fremont  was 
unfit  by  nature  and  by  training  for  the  enormous  respon- 
sibility laid  upon  him  by  Mr.  Lincoln's  appointment. 

The  new  general's  initial  duties  were  of  vital  impor- 
tance. His  earliest  efforts  should  obviously  have  been 
directed  toward  harmonizing  the  discordant  factions  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  distracted  the  Union  cause  in  Missouri. 
That  commonwealth  was  especially  delicate  ground.  It 


296       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

put  to  a  severe  test  the  famous  "  Border  State  policy," 
by  which  the  President  labored  to  rescue  Missouri,  Ken- 
tucky, and  Maryland  from  secession.  "  These  all  against 
us,"  said  he,  "  and  the  job  on  our  hands  is  too  large 
for  us.  We  would  as  well  consent  to  separation  at  once, 
including  the  surrender  of  this  Capital."  6  Whether  the 
wavering  sections  could  be  induced  to  wheel  into  the  Fed- 
eral column  turned  largely,  of  course,  on  the  question  of 
slavery.  Mr.  Lincoln,  accordingly,  during  the  first  period 
of  the  struggle,  maintained  a  conservative  attitude  toward 
that  institution.  Laying  aside  his  own  deep  sympathy  for 
the  bondmen,  he  strove  to  retain  the  support  of  loyal 
slaveholders  in  the  Border  States,  and  of  their  sympathiz- 
ers in  the  North,  by  repeatedly  declaring  his  controlling 
purpose  to  be  the  preservation  of  the  Union.  He  went 
so  far,  indeed,  as  to  proclaim  that  it  was  not  the  intention 
of  the  government  to  interfere  with  slavery,  as  such,  in 
any  of  the  Southern  States.  This  policy  —  need  we  add  ? 
—  had  been  adopted  in  good  faith.  That  its  sincerity 
should  be  generally  unquestioned  was,  judging  from  the 
President's  utterances,  essential  to  the  very  existence  of 
the  country.  He  expected  his  subordinates,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  to  cooperate  with  him  along  a  line  so  deliber- 
ately chosen  ;  and  upon  none  did  this  obligation  more 
palpably  rest  than  upon  the  commander  of  the  Western 
Department. 

But,  almost  from  the  day  of  his  assignment,  Fremont 
was  a  source  of  anxiety  and  embarrassment  to  the  ad- 
ministration. He  became,  in  fact,  one  of  the  keenest  of 
Lincoln's  disappointments.  When,  after  three  weeks  of 
perhaps  unavoidable  delay,  the  General  arrived  at  his 
headquarters  in  St.  Louis,  he  found  the  department  in  a 
state  of  disorganization  which  energetic,  though  often- 
times misdirected,  efforts  improved  too  slowly.  The  regu- 
lar forces  of  the  enemy  menaced  him  from  several  direc- 
tions, small  bands  of  bushwhackers  spread  through  country 
districts  the  horrors  of  guerrilla  warfare,  and  neighbor- 


THE   PATHFINDER  297 

hood  feuds  were  responsible  for  private  outrages  of  every 
kind.  To  meet  the  military  needs  of  the  situation,  without 
losing  sight  of  its  political  aspects,  required  the  exercise 
of  an  unclouded  judgment.  That  is  precisely  what  Fre- 
mont, at  this  juncture,  did  not  have.  He  was  surrounded 
by  a  swarm  of  time-servers,  who,  for  their  own  ends, 
played  upon  the  weaknesses  of  a  brave  man.  Their  ful- 
some praise,  together  with  the  clamor  of  the  Abolitionists, 
whose  idol  the  "  Pathfinder  "  still  was,  incited  him  to  the 
one  thing  which,  above  all  others,  he  should  not  have  done. 
On  August  30,  1861,  Fremont  issued  his  famous  emanci- 
pation proclamation.  This  announced  that  owing  to  the 
lawless  condition  of  Missouri,  the  General  commanding 
"  should  assume  the  administrative  powers  of  the  State," 
and  establish  martial  law.  Having  defined  the  limits  of 
military  occupation,  the  document  proceeded  :  — 

"  All  persons  who  shall  be  taken  with  arms  in  their 
hands  within  these  lines  shall  be  tried  by  court-martial, 
and  if  found  guilty  will  be  shot. 

"  The  property,  real  and  personal,  of  all  persons  in  the 
State  of  Missouri  who  shall  take  up  arms  against  the 
United  States,  or  who  shall  be  directly  proven  to  have 
taken  an  active  part  with  their  enemies  in  the  field,  is 
declared  to  be  confiscated  to  the  public  use,  and  their 
slaves,  if  any  they  have,  are  hereby  declared  freemen."  7 

To  render  this  last  startling  clause  operative,  the  au- 
thor of  it  at  once  convened  a  military  commission,  which 
began  to  issue  deeds  of  manumission. 

By  a  stroke  of  his  pen,  so  to  say,  Fremont  had  momen- 
tarily changed  the  issue  before  the  country  from  Union 
to  Emancipation.  That  the  change  might  be  fraught  with 
danger  to  the  Federal  arms,  and  with  perplexities  beyond 
calculation  to  the  already  overburdened  President  who  had 
reposed  so  much  confidence  in  him,  does  not  appear  to 
have  given  the  General  any  concern.  That  his  act,  withal, 
greatly  aggravated  rather  than  soothed  the  local  irritation 
which  he  had  been  sent  to  allay,  seemed  equally  unimpor- 


298       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

tant  to  him.  For,  granting  a  set-back  in  the  Western 
Department,  he  no  doubt  thought  himself  more  than 
compensated,  in  the  country  at  large,  by  a  return  of  his 
old-time  popularity.  Fremont,  in  fact,  now  again  loomed 
large  in  the  public  eye.  His  proclamation  aroused  the 
Radicals  throughout  the  North  to  the  highest  pitch  of 
enthusiasm ;  while  many  Unionists,  who  had  not  been  so 
keen  about  slavery,  applauded  what  looked  at  first  sight 
like  a  crushing  blow  against  the  South.  But  Mr.  Lincoln, 
stationed  where  he  could  see  —  and  indeed  where  he  had 
to  deal  with  —  both  sides  of  the  question,  saw  mischief 
alone  in  this  extraordinary  fiat.  Immediately  upon  its 
appearance,  the  support  which  he  had  been  so  tactfully 
nursing  in  the  ^Border  States,  especially  in  Kentucky, 
threatened  to  become  antagonism  ;  just  as  the  embers  of 
factional  difference  within  the  Republican  Party  itself, 
kept  previously  under  control  by  his  cool  management, 
were  stirred,  no  less  suddenly,  into  a  blaze  of  controversy. 
In  the  excitement  that  ensued,  some  of  the  President's 
best  friends  appeared  to  waver.  Like  his  critics,  they 
failed,  for  a  time,  to  realize  that  however  much  Fremont's 
proclamation  might  please  them,  the  impetuous  hand 
which  penned  it  had  thereby  sought  to  grasp  not  only 
the  executive  powers  of  the  government,  but  the  legis- 
lative and  judicial  functions  as  well. 

This  view  was  set  forth,  with  Mr.  Lincoln's  accustomed 
force,  in  a  confidential  letter  to  his  old  friend,  Senator 
Orville  H.  Browning,  who  had  approved  of  the  manifesto. 
Here,  in  part,  is  what  the  President  wrote :  — 

"  General  Fremont's  proclamation  as  to  confiscation  of 
property  and  the  liberation  of  slaves  is  purely  political ', 
and  not  within  the  range  of  military  law  or  necessity.  If 
a  commanding  general  finds  a  necessity  to  seize  the  farm 
of  a  private  owner  for  a  pasture,  an  encampment,  or  a 
fortification,  he  has  the  right  to  do  so,  and  to  so  hold  it 
as  long  as  the  necessity  lasts  ;  and  this  is  within  military 
law,  because  within  military  necessity.  But  to  say  the 


THE   PATHFINDER  299 

farm  shall  no  longer  belong  to  the  owner,  or  his  heirs  for- 
ever, and  this  as  well  when  the  farm  is  not  needed  for 
military  purposes  as  when  it  is,  is  purely  political,  without 
ihe  savor  of  military  law  about  it.  And  the  same  is  true 
of  slaves.  If  the  general  needs  them,  he  can  seize  them 
and  use  them;  but  when  the  need  is  past,  it  is  not  for 
him  to  fix  their  permanent  future  condition.  That  must 
be  settled  according  to  laws  made  by  law-makers,  and 
not  by  military  proclamations.  The  proclamation  in  the 
point  in  question  is  simply  '  dictatorship.'  It  assumes  that 
the  general  may  do  anything  he  pleases  —  confiscate  the 
lands  and  free  the  slaves  of  loyal  people,  as  well  as  of 
disloyal  ones.  And  going  the  whole  figure,  I  have  no 
doubt,  would  be  more  popular  with  some  thoughtless 
people  than  that  which  has  been  done !  But  I  cannot 
assume  this  reckless  position,  nor  allow  others  to  assume 
it  on  my  responsibility." 8 

The  President,  it  should  be  observed,  saw  fit,  in  the  fol- 
lowing year,  to  shift  his  ground  somewhat ;  but  he  did  so 
deliberately,  under  vastly  different  conditions,  and  by  his 
own  act  —  not  at  the  dictation  of  a  usurping  subordinate. 

Meanwhile  the  clash  of  policy  —  to  say  nothing  of 
authority  —  between  Fremont  and  Lincoln  required  im- 
mediate attention.  Something,  moreover,  had  to  be  done 
at  once  in  order  that  the  General  might  be  turned  from 
his  declared  purpose  to  shoot  prisoners.  As  soon  as  a  copy 
of  the  proclamation  reached  the  President,  he  despatched 
a  special  messenger  to  St.  Louis  with  a  "  private  "  letter, 
which  read :  — 

"Two  points  in  your  proclamation  of  August  30  give 
me  some  anxiety. 

"First.  Should  you  shoot  a  man,  according  to  the 
proclamation,  the  Confederates  would  very  certainly  shoot 
our  best  men  in  their  hands  in  retaliation ;  and  so,  man 
for  man,  indefinitely.  It  is,  therefore,  my  order  that 
you  will  allow  no  man  to  be  shot  under  the  proclamation 
without  first  having  my  approbation  or  consent. 


300      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

"  Second.  I  think  there  is  great  danger  that  the  closing 
paragraph,  in  relation  to  the  confiscation  of  property  and 
the  liberating  slaves  of  traitorous  owners,  will  alarm  our 
southern  Union  friends  and  turn  them  against  us ;  per- 
haps ruin  our  rather  fair  prospect  for  Kentucky.  Allow 
me,  therefore,  to  ask  that  you  will,  as  of  your  own  motion, 
modify  that  paragraph  so  as  to  conform  to  the  first  and 
fourth  sections  of  the  Act  of  Congress  entitled,  *  An  act 
to  confiscate  property  used  for  insurrectionary  purposes,' 
approved  August  6,  1861,  and  a  copy  of  which  act  I 
herewith  send  you.9 

"  This  letter  is  written  in  a  spirit  of  caution,  and  not 
of  censure.  I  send  it  by  special  messenger,  in  order  that 
it  may  certainly  and  speedily  reach  you,"  10 

Mr.  Lincoln's  first  point  was,  as  the  parliamentarians 
say,  well  taken.  That  headlong  threat  of  indiscriminate 
military  executions  had  shared,  without  particular  scrutiny, 
the  plaudits  bestowed  upon  the  order  of  emancipation. 
Its  unwisdom  was,  nevertheless,  obvious  to  the  President. 
And  how  accurately,  although  nine  hundred  miles  from  the 
scene  of  action,  had  he  gauged  the  temper  of  the  enemy! 
On  the  very  day  his  letter  was  sent,  General  M.  Jeff 
Thompson,  Confederate  Commander  of  the  First  Military 
District  of  Missouri,  issued  a  retaliatory  proclamation,  in 
which  he  "most  solemnly"  announced  that  for  every 
soldier  of  the  State  guard  or  of  the  southern  army  so  put 
to  death,  he  would  "  hang,  draw,  and  quarter  a  minion  of 
said  Abraham  Lincoln."  n  Yet  Fremont  could  not  bring 
himself  frankly  to  acknowledge  his  error.  On  the  con- 
trary, we  find  him,  six  days  later,  defending  his  position, 
in  an  answer  to  the  President.  This  missive  ignored,  with 
singular  untruthfulness,  Thompson's  proclamation,  and 
said  as  to  his  own  :  — 

"  I  do  not  think  the  enemy  can  either  misconstrue  or 
urge  anything  against  it,  or  undertake  to  make  unusual 
retaliation."  12 

Having  thus   seemingly  maintained   his   dignity,  the 


THE   PATHFINDER  301 

General  seized  an  early  opportunity  to  assure  another 
Confederate  officer,  who  demanded  an  explanation,  that 
he  did  not  intend  to  violate,  under  his  proclamation,  the 
usages  of  war.13 

Point  number  two  in  Mr.  Lincoln's  letter  was  made 
with  characteristic  delicacy.  There  was  —  as  we  know  — 
not  a  word  about  the  General's  presumptuous  exercise  of 
an  authority  which  properly  belonged  to  the  government ; 
nor  was  there  more  than  a  gentle  reference  to  the  troubles 
which  his  impulsive  act  had  brought  upon  the  Head  of 
that  government.14  The  President's  self-restraint  deceived 
Fremont,  as  it  did  so  many  other  "  big  men,"  in  1861. 
Our  "Pathfinder"  managed  not  to  find  the  kindness  that 
had  inspired  the  letter;  but  he  did  find  —  at  least,  he  is 
credibly  said  to  have  found  in  it  —  an  attempt  to  rob  him 
of  his  newly  enhanced  popularity.  Be  this  as  it  may,  he 
felt  strong  enough  to  take  issue  with  the  Executive  in 
defence  of  the  proclamation.  "Modify"  that  illustrious 
document !  —  not  he.  His  wife,  the  daughter  of  the  great 
Benton,  advanced  upon  Washington  to  deliver  Fremont's 
reply  and,  incidentally,  to  bully  the  President.  That  one 
of  the  so-called  gentler  sex  should  be  sent  on  such  a  mis- 
sion need  not  surprise  us  after  we  learn  that  during  her 
stay  at  department  headquarters  she  was  described  as 
"  the  real  chief  of  staff."  When  it  is  remembered,  more- 
over, that  Jessie  Benton  had  inherited  a  son's  full  portion 
of  her  distinguished  father's  aggressive  personality,  we 
tremble  for  poor  Mr.  Lincoln.  "  She  sought  an  audience 
with  me  at  midnight,"  said  he  afterwards,  in  a  confiden- 
tial chat,15  "  and  taxed  me  so  violently  with  many  things, 
that  I  had  to  exercise  all  the  awkward  tact  I  have  to 
avoid  quarreling  with  her.  .  .  .  She  more  than  once  in- 
timated that  if  General  Fremont  should  decide  to  try 
conclusions  with  me,  he  could  set  up  for  himself."  w  Such 
a  menace  from  such  a  source  was  significant.  It  must 
have  reminded  the  President  of  the  rumors  which  had 
persistently  linked  the  name  of  the  lady's  husband  with 


302       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

revolutionary  designs.  According  to  some,  Fremont  was 
to  establish  an  independent  Confederacy  in  the  Northwest ; 
while  others  —  principally  extreme  Abolitionists,  and  his 
own  personal  followers  —  urged  that  he  ought  to  be  placed, 
as  dictator,  in  absolute  control  of  national  affairs.  Yet 
these  mutterings  do  not  appear  to  have  greatly  disturbed 
Mr.  Lincoln.  He  took  no  formal  notice  of  Mrs.  Fremont's 
treasonable  talk,  nor  of  the  insubordination  that  lurked  on 
the  under  side  of  the  written  message  which  she  brought. 

In  his  letter  to  the  President,  General  Fremont  asserted 
the  wisdom  of  the  proclamation  and  his  right  to  make  it. 

"  This  is  as  much  a  movement  in  the  war  as  a  battle,'* 
said  he,  "and  in  going  into  these  I  shall  have  to  act 
according  to  my  judgment  of  the  ground  before  me,  as  I 
did  on  this  occasion.  If,  upon  reflection,  your  better  judg- 
ment still  decides  that  I  am  wrong  in  the  article  respecting 
the  liberation  of  slaves,  I  have  to  ask  that  you  will  openly 
direct  me  to  make  the  correction.  The  implied  censure 
will  be  received  as  a  soldier  always  should  the  reprimand 
of  his  chief.  If  I  wei'e  to  retract  of  my  own  accord,  it 
would  imply  that  I  myself  thought  it  wrong,  and  that  I 
had  acted  without  the  reflection  which  the  gravity  of  the 
point  demanded.  But  I  did  not.  I  acted  with  full  delib- 
eration, and  upon  the  certain  conviction  that  it  was  a 
measure  right  and  necessary,  and  I  think  so  still."  " 

Fremont's  request,  whatever  may  be  said  of  its  wilful- 
ness,  looked  shrewd  enough.  If  he  was  playing  politics,  — 
and  there  is  reason  for  so  believing,  —  he  could  hardly 
have  found  a  surer  method  of  strengthening  himself,  in 
certain  quarters,  at  Lincoln's  expense.  Should  the  Presi- 
dent publicly  order  him  to  modify  the  proclamation,  they 
might  stand  before  the  people  as  the  champions  of  oppos. 
ing  policies.  In  that  event,  the  advantage  of  positions 
would,  to  all  appearances,  —  from  a  sentimental  as  well  as 
from  a  moral  point  of  view,  —  rest  with  Fremont.  His 
pretensions  could  not,  in  the  nature  of  things,  fail  to 
command  Radical  support ;  and  the  North  at  large,  or, 


THE   PATHFINDER  303 

accurately  speaking,  a  considerable  part  thereof,  had 
already,  by  its  first  frank  outburst  of  approval  over  the 
proclamation,  seemingly  indicated  on  which  side  its  choice 
would  lie. 

Still  Mr.  Lincoln  stood  firm.  True  to  the  singleness  of 
purpose  that  distinguished  him  at  critical  junctures,  he 
adhered  to  his  much-condemned  policy.  The  prospect  of 
Fremont's  rivalry,  with  all  its  adventitious  strength,  was 
allowed  to  influence  his  course,  in  this  respect,  no  more 
than  had  Fremont's  contumacious  letter  or  the  threats  of 
Fremont's  messenger.  On  the  day  following  her  arrival 
in  Washington,  the  President  despatched  an  answer  to 
St.  Louis.  Touching  in  his  passionless  way  on  the  emanci- 
pation clause  of  Fremont's  proclamation,  he  commanded 
it  to  be  so  modified  as  not  to  go  beyond  the  Act  of  August 
6,  1861,  and  directed  a  copy  of  the  law  to  be  published 
with  his  order.18  This  made  up  the  issue  between  them 
precisely  as  the  General  had  desired.  It  left  his  prestige 
with  the  Abolitionists  unimpaired,  and  seemed  to  estab- 
lish his  status  generally  as  the  better  —  if  not  indeed  the 
stronger  —  Republican  of  the  two.  Comparisons  between 
Lincoln  and  Fremont  were,  in  fact,  now  freely  made  to 
the  President's  disparagement.  "  He  is  not  a  genius,"  said 
Wendell  Phillips,  from  the  platform,  some  months  later ; 
"  he  is  not  a  man  like  Fremont,  to  stamp  the  lava  mass  of 
the  nation  with  an  idea."  19  But  it  was  in  the  first  throes 
of  their  disappointment  over  the  fate  of  the  proclamation 
that  the  anti-slavery  people  were  especially  severe  upon 
Lincoln.  Great  newspapers  and  influential  men  were 
equally  unsparing  in  their  censure.  Some  even  went  so 
far  as  to  advocate  the  impeachment  of  the  President,  and 
to  spread  the  talk  of  a  military  dictatorship  under  General 
Fremont.  "  I  have  never,"  wrote  Judge  Hoadly  of  Cin- 
cinnati to  a  member  of  the  cabinet,  "  heard  wilder  or 
more  furious  denunciation  than  yesterday  and  day  before 
found  expression  from  the  lips  of  cool  men.  Three  times 
I  was  applied  to,  to  join  in  getting  up  a  public  meeting  to 


304      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

denounce  the  administration  and  support  Fremont ;  and 
while  no  such  disturbance  will  be  permitted,  I  am  never- 
theless certain  that  there  is  here  a  perfect  and,  I  am  sorry 
to  say,  very  angry  unanimity  in  support  both  of  Fremont's 
proclamation  and  of  his  action  at  St.  Louis  in  other  re- 
spects, expensive  though  it  may  have  been.  .  .  .  General 
Fremont  is  thus  far  the  favorite  of  the  Northwest,  because 
he  has  come  up  to  the  standard.  And  if  the  election  were 
next  fall,  to  displace  him  would  be  to  make  him  Presi- 
dent." M  That  Fremont's  removal  was  commonly  expected 
at  the  time  is  its  own  commentary  on  his  behavior.  But 
we  have  studied  Abraham  Lincoln  to  small  purpose  if  we 
are  prepared  for  such  a  sequel  to  the  incident.  The  Presi- 
dent, in  fact,  declared  that  he  had  "  no  thought  of  remov- 
ing General  Fremont  on  any  ground  connected  with  his 
proclamation."  And  this  brings  us  to  the  reasons  why 
the  gentleman  was,  about  seven  weeks  later,  relieved  of 
his  command. 

Troublesome  to  the  administration  as  were  Fremont's 
anti-slavery  tactics,  the  General's  military  and  executive 
blunders  proved  to  be  no  less  embarrassing.  During  the 
first  eight  weeks  of  his  control  in  the  Western  Depart- 
ment, Missouri  was  the  scene  of  two  relatively  important 
battles.  They  were  both  disastrous  to  the  Federal  cause, 
and  in  each  instance  he  was  severely  blamed ;  for  Wil- 
son's Creek,  as  well  as  Lexington,  is  charged  to  Fremont's 
account.  The  former  engagement  was  the  culmination  of 
a  campaign  that  had  begun  before  the  General  assumed 
command.  While  he  tarried  in  New  York,  those  precious 
weeks  after  his  appointment,  came  appeals  for  reinforce- 
ments from  southwestern  Missouri,  where  General  Nathan- 
iel Lyon,  with  a  wretchedly  equipped  force,  faced  twice 
his  strength  in  State  and  Confederate  troops.  These  calls 
for  aid  became  more  urgent  on  the  arrival  of  Fremont  at 
St.  Louis.  Letters,  telegrams,  special  messengers,  followed 
one  another  in  quick  succession.  They  continued,  in  fact, 
almost  up  to  the  hour  —  sixteen  days  later  —  when  Lyon. 


THE   PATHFINDER  305 

making  his  choice  between  a  hazardous  retreat  and  a  des- 
perate battle,  attacked  the  enemy  at  Wilson's  Creek.21  In 
the  ensuing  action,  —  one  of  the  bloodiest  of  the  war,  — 
the  Union  forces  struggled  vainly  against  overwhelming 
numbers,  and  the  gallant  Lyon  fell  at  the  head  of  his 
troops.  He  had  seemingly  been  left  to  fight  without  guid- 
ance or  succor  from  his  superior  officer.  There  is  good 
reason  to  believe,  however,  that  a  message  from  Fremont, 
received  on  the  eve  of  the  battle,  had  instructed  Lyon,  in 
case  he  found  himself  too  weak  for  his  position,  to  fall 
back  until  reinforcements  should  meet  him.  Yet  nothing 
was  generally  known,  at  the  time,  about  this  order,  which 
has  disappeared  from  the  Official  Records;  and  the  De- 
partment Commander,  when  he  testified  in  his  defence 
before  the  Committee  on  the  Conduct  of  the  War,  omitted, 
for  reasons  that  can  only  be  conjectured,  to  include  a  copy 
of  the  document  among  the  despatches  that  he  submitted 
with  his  testimony.22  It  is  but  fair  to  add  that  Fremont 
gave  tardy  orders  for  several  regiments  to  join  Lyon ; 
though  they  did  not  —  it  should  also  be  said  —  move  in 
time  to  be  of  any  service.  Owing  to  a  similar  failure,  the 
Union  arms  were  again  defeated  in  Missouri,  under  mor- 
tifying conditions,  the  following  month,  at  Lexington. 
That  place  was  held  by  Colonel  James  A.  Mulligan,  with 
a  force  of  about  2800  Federals,  when  General  Stirling 
Price  appeared  before  it,  with  an  army  of  State  troops, 
which  soon  numbered  over  20,000  men.  Against  these 
heavy  odds  the  little  garrison,  confident  that  it  would  be 
relieved,  held  out  through  siege  and  assault  for  eight 
days.  This  gave  General  Fremont  ample  time  in  which 
to  send  the  sadly  needed  reinforcements ;  but  he  again 
acted  too  slowly,  and  when  several  relief  columns  had 
been  set  in  motion,  their  efforts  to  reach  Colonel  Mulligan 
were,  by  one  fatality  or  another,  rendered  futile.  Despair- 
ing of  help,  that  officer,  after  a  spirited  resistance  to  the 
limit  of  his  resources,  surrendered.23  Tidings  of  this  dis- 
aster were  received  in  the  North  with  a  cry  of  indigna* 


306       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

tion  against  the  General  commanding  the  department. 
He  was  condemned  on  the  face  of  it  by  the  deadly  par- 
allel which  people  drew  between  Lexington  and  Wilson's 
Creek.  To  what  precise  extent  these  two  reverses  were 
justly  laid  at  Fremont's  door  need  not  be  determined 
here.  Granting  all  the  difficulties,  however,  under  which 
he  claims  to  have  labored,  it  is  the  judgment  of  history 
that,  with  the  means  at  his  command,  better  generalship 
could  have  brought  about  different  results  in  both  actions. 

Meanwhile,  Fremont's  exertions  at  headquarters  to 
bring  order  out  of  chaos  opened  up  a  whole  Iliad  of  woes. 
He  worked  hard,  with  insufficient  means,  to  organize  and 
equip  an  army  for  a  great  campaign  down  the  Mississippi. 
But  obstacles  that  would  have  tried  a  stronger  man  beset 
him  on  every  side.  His  confused  efforts  to  remove  them 
laid  a  train  of  troubles  which  he  might  have  avoided  only 
by  exercising  administrative  skill  of  the  first  order ;  aud 
this,  as  we  know,  Fremont  did  not  possess.  Unfortunately, 
what  the  General  lacked  in  that  particular  could  hardly 
be  supplied  by  the  persons  to  whom  he  entrusted  impor- 
tant duties.  For  his  confidence  was  given  not  to  the  officers 
nearest  to  him  in  rank,  but  to  a  coterie  of  parasites,  among 
whom  he  scattered  commissions  and  contracts  with  a  lib- 
eral hand.  This  gang  of  speculators,  held  together,  as  has 
been  pithily  said,  by  the  cohesive  power  of  public  plunder, 
subordinated  the  welfare  of  the  department  to  their  own 
interests ;  and  went  so  far,  at  times,  as  to  crowd  out  loyal 
men  from  intercourse  with  the  misguided  commander. 
Fremont's  methods  not  only  seriously  retarded  his  opera- 
tions, but  what  proved  right  here  to  be  of  even  greater 
moment,  they,  at  the  same  time,  estranged  from  him  some 
of  the  most  prominent  Unionists  in  the  State. 

Among  those  who  found  fault  with  the  General  was 
Colonel  Francis  Preston  Blair,  Jr.  Indeed,  his  voice  most 
insistently  of  all  cried,  — 

"  Fie  on  the  chance  that  brings  the  righteous  man 
Clos^-mated  with  the  ungodly  I " 


THE   PATHFINDER  307 

He  had  the  right  to  speak,  if  any  one  had.  A  member  of 
Congress  from  St.  Louis,  as  well  as  commanding  officer 
in  the  First  Volunteer  Regiment  of  Missouri  Light  Artil- 
lery, he  had  done  more  than  any  other  man  to  hold  his 
State  in  the  Federal  columns.  By  common  consent,  the 
"  unconditional  Unionists  "  of  that  section  looked  upon 
him  as  their  leader.  Whatever  he  did  was  therefore  in- 
vested with  an  importance  of  its  own,  regardless  of  the 
President's  friendly  attitude  toward  the  Blair  family. 
When  their  opinion  had  been  taken,  at  the  outbreak  of 
the  war,  concerning  the  best  man  for  Missouri,  they  had 
enthusiastically  recommended  their  old  friend  and  political 
favorite,  Colonel  Fremont.24  As  his  nomination  to  the 
presidency,  in  1856,  was  generally  credited  to  Francis 
P.  Blair,  Sr.,  so  his  assignment,  five  years  later,  to  the 
Western  Department  —  as  far  as  this  may  not  have  been 
Mr.  Lincoln's  spontaneous  act  —  must  be  ascribed  to  the 
influence  of  that  same  redoubtable  politician  and  his  two 
no  less  strenuous  sons.  The  older  of  these,  Montgomery, 
who  had  become  Postmaster-General,  is  even  said  to  have 
been  the  sole  advocate  in  the  cabinet  of  Fremont's  appoint- 
ment. Be  that  as  it  may,  the  General  had  no  sooner  taken 
command  than  the  Blairs,  with  the  whole-heartedness  so 
characteristic  of  the  family,  threw  themselves  into  his 
service.  Frank  at  St.  Louis  and  Montgomery  at  Wash- 
ington advised,  planned,  and  labored  for  his  success.  But 
Frank's  confidence  in  Fremont,  rudely  shaken  by  the 
affair  of  Wilson's  Creek,  became  still  further  impaired  by 
the  disaster  at  Lexington,  and  by  what  he  deemed  the 
gross  mismanagement  at  headquarters.  His  letters,  after 
a  time,  to  the  Postmaster-General  "  were  pervaded,"  said 
Mr.  Lincoln,  in  the  confidential  chat  to  which  reference 
has  been  made,  "  with  a  tone  of  sincere  sorrow  and  of  fear 
that  Fremont  would  fail.  Montgomery  showed  them  to 
me,"  the  President  continued,  "  and  we  were  both  grieved 
at  the  prospect." 25  In  a  letter  dated  September  1,  this 
correspondence  reached  its  inevitable  climax.  Declaring 


308       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

the  General  "  incapable  of  comprehending  his  position," 
Frank  urged  that  he  "  should  be  relieved  of  his  command, 
and  a  man  of  ability  put  in  his  place." 28  Such  a  dictum 
from  the  leader  who  had  a  few  weeks  before  been  Fre- 
mont's stanchest  supporter  could  not  fail  to  weigh  heavily 
with  the  President.  He  found  in  what  Colonel  Blair  wrote, 
moreover,  striking  corroboration  of  the  charges  and  com- 
plaints that  had  assailed  him  from  many  sources  ;  but 
Lincoln  sometimes  carried  to  an  almost  culpable  extreme 
the  loyalty  with  which  he  stood  by  the  men  to  whom  he 
had  given  his  confidence.  For  a  week  —  the  very  week, 
indeed,  which  followed  the  publication  of  that  trouble- 
some emancipation  proclamation  —  he  pondered,  not  the 
truculent  commander's  removal,  but  how  best  to  sustain 
him  in  his  place. 

Fremont  had  evidently  fallen  into  the  hands  of  bad 
advisers.  Concluding  them  to  be  responsible  for  most  of 
these  weak  spots  in  the  General's  armor,  the  President 
set  out  to  reenforce  it,  after  his  own  informal  fashion. 
He  despatched  two  confidential  representatives  with  in- 
structions to  look  into  the  condition  of  things  at  St. 
Louis,  and  to  give  Fremont  a  little  judicious  counsel. 
The  visitors  were  Postmaster-General  Blair  —  who,  by  the 
way,  had  a  West  Point  education  —  and  Montgomery  C. 
Meigs,  Quartermaster-General  of  the  army.  They  car- 
ried with  them  a  letter  written  by  Abraham  Lincoln  to 
his  friend,  General  David  Hunter,  stationed  at  Chicago. 
It  read :  — 

"  General  Fremont  needs  assistance  which  it  is  difficult 
to  give  him.  He  is  losing  the  confidence  of  men  near  him, 
whose  support  any  man  in  his  position  must  have  to  be 
successful.  His  cardinal  mistake  is  that  he  isolates  himself 
and  allows  nobody  to  see  him,  and  by  which  he  does  not 
know  what  is  going  on  in  the  very  matter  he  is  dealing 
with.  He  needs  to  have  by  his  side  a  man  of  large  expe- 
rience. Will  you  not,  for  me,  take  that  place?  Your 
rank  is  one  grade  too  high  to  be  ordered  to  it,  but  will 


THE   PATHFINDER  309 

you  not  serve  the  country  and  oblige  me  by  taking  it 
voluntarily  ?  "  27 

General  Hunter  took  the  post  of  second  in  command 
at  St.  Louis,  as  the  President  had  requested  ;  but  matters 
did  not  appear  to  mend.  Like  several  experienced  officers 
of  high  rank,  before  him,  the  newcomer  failed  to  get  on  a 
confidential  footing  with  his  superior.  Fremont's  affairs, 
in  fact,  went  from  bad  to  worse,  and  complaints  redoubled 
on  every  hand.  The  resources  of  the  Treasury  were 
strained  by  the  exorbitant  bills  of  the  rascals  who  were 
looting  the  Western  Department ;  while  what  Montgomery 
Blair  saw  but  served  to  confirm  the  reports  of  maladmin- 
istration, already  in  Mr.  Lincoln's  hands.  The  Postmas- 
ter-General, therefore,  upon  returning  to  Washington, 
expressed  his  opinion  that  the  good  of  the  service  required 
Fremont's  removal. 

An  acrimonious  personal  quarrel  with  the  Blairs  had 
meanwhile  complicated  the  situation.  Mrs.  Fremont,  after 
her  arrival  at  the  Capital,  on  that  memorable  mission  in 
defence  of  the  proclamation,  had  heard  about  the  Colonel's 
criticisms.  She  indignantly  denounced  them,  in  her  inter- 
view with  the  President,  and  subsequently  made  a  written 
demand  upon  him  for  copies  of  all  the  faultfinding  letters 
that  had  come  from  the  West.  These  he  politely  declined 
to  fumish  without  the  consent  of  the  writers.  He  was 
moved  by  the  lady's  heat,  moreover,  to  explain  that  the 
Postmaster-General  had  been  sent  to  St.  Louis,  as  a 
friend  of  her  husband ;  and  he  protested,  with  no  uncertain 
tone,  "  against  being  understood  as  acting  in  any  hostil- 
ity "  toward  General  Fremont.28  But  here  the  President, 
of  course,  found  himself  at  a  disadvantage.  He  could  not 
show  the  confidential  reports  that  made  it  his  duty  to 
investigate  the  affairs  of  the  Western  Department;  nor 
could  he  prove  how  kindly  —  despite  what  had  happened  — 
he  felt  toward  Fremont,  by  telling  that  officer's  militant 
spouse  about  the  message  to  Hunter.  Mrs.  Fremont  natu- 
rally lost  no  time  in  reporting  how  things  stood,  to  her 


310      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

General,  who,  smarting  under  a  sense  of  injury,  ordered 
Colonel  Blair's  arrest.  Notice  of  this  was  telegraphed  to 
the  War  Department,  with  an  intimation  that  charges  in 
preparation  would  touch  upon  the  Colonel's  "insidious 
and  dishonorable  efforts  to  bring  "  the  commander's  "  au- 
thority into  contempt  with  the  government,  and  to  under- 
mine" his  "influence  as  an  officer."29  After  an  interval 
of  ten  days,  Frank  was,  at  his  brother's  request,  released. 
He  forthwith  declared  that  he,  in  turn,  would  prefer 
charges  against  Fremont,  who  met  this  announcement  with 
the  rearrest  of  his  now  embittered  critic.  When  Colonel 
Blair's  formal  accusations  reached  the  authorities,  they 
were  found  to  be  of  a  grave  character.  Charging  General 
Fremont  with  neglect  of  duty,  unofficer-like  conduct,  dis- 
obedience of  orders,  behavior  unbecoming  a  gentleman, 
waste  of  the  public  moneys,  and  despotic  courses,  he  sup- 
ported this  catalogue  of  his  superior's  sins  with  a  still 
more  formidable  array  of  specifications.30 

The  tangle  into  which  Missouri  had,  by  this  time,  fallen, 
was  a  source  of  almost  constant  anxiety  to  the  President. 
Determined  upon  having  things  set  right,  once  for  all, 
he  hurried  the  Secretary  of  War  to  the  scene,  with  power 
to  act.  Mr.  Cameron,  accompanied  by  Adjutant-General 
Thomas,  overtook  Fremont  in  the  field,  after  he  had  started 
on  his  campaign.  The  Secretary  of  War,  like  the  cabinet 
colleague  who  had  preceded  him,  speedily  arrived  at  an 
unfavorable  conclusion.  "  I  had  an  interview  with  General 
Fremont,"  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  "and  in  conversation 
with  him  showed  him  an  order  for  his  removal.  He  was 
very  much  mortified,  pained,  and,  I  thought,  humiliated. 
He  made  an  earnest  appeal  to  me,  saying  that  he  had 
come  to  Missouri,  at  the  request  of  the  government,  to 
assume  a  very  responsible  command,  and  that  when  he 
reached  this  State  he  found  himself  without  troops  and 
without  any  preparation  for  an  army  ;  that  he  had  ex« 
erted  himself,  as  he  believed,  with  great  energy,  and  had 
now  around  him  a  fine  army,  with  everything  to  make 


THE   PATHFINDER  311 

success  certain ;  that  he  was  in  pursuit  of  the  enemy,  who 
he  believed  were  within  his  reach ;  and  that  to  recall  him 
at  this  moment  would  not  only  destroy  him,  but  render  his 
whole  expenditure  useless.  In  reply  to  this  appeal,  I  told 
him  that  I  would  withhold  the  order  until  my  return  to 
Washington,  giving  him  the  interim  to  prove  the  reality 
of  his  hopes  as  to  reaching  and  capturing  the  enemy,  giv- 
ing him  to  understand  that,  should  he  fail,  he  must  give 
place  to  some  other  officer.  He  assured  me  that,  should 
he  fail,  he  would  resign  at  once." 31 

The  reprieve  was  hardly  warranted  by  what  Mr.  Cam- 
eron's investigations  disclosed.  A  report  drawn  up  under 
his  direction  by  General  Thomas,  when  they  had  returned 
to  Washington,  appeared  —  even  after  allowing  for  the 
hearsay  nature  of  certain  statements  —  to  bear  out  the 
most  serious  among  Colonel  Blair's  charges.32  So  severe 
was  the  Adjutant- General's  censure  that  one  might  doubt 
his  good  faith,  if  it  were  not  for  the  cloud  of  witnesses 
whose  testimony  against  Fremont  had,  all  this  time,  con- 
tinued to  pour  in  upon  the  administration.  There  could 
no  longer  be  any  question  as  to  the  President's  duty. 
Even  his  rnuch-enduring  patience  had  well-nigh  reached 
its  limit.  Fremont's  time  was  up.  Whatever  might  be  the 
hapless  General's  grievances,  his  ability,  or  his  deserts, 
the  period  of  his  usefulness  in  Missouri  had  plainly 
passed.33  Aside  from  weighty  considerations  of  public  pol- 
icy, moreover,  General  Thomas  reported  an  instance  of 
disobedience  so  flagrant  that,  under  any  other  President 
than  Abraham  Lincoln,  it  would  have  brought  the  offender 
to  immediate  disgrace.  Somewhat  over  a  week,  ran  the 
story,  after  Fremont  had  received  the  President's  order 
modifying  his  emancipation  proclamation,  two  hundred 
copies  of  that  very  document  as  originally  issued  were 
sent,  by  the  General's  express  commands,  to  eastern  Mis- 
souri for  distribution.34  That  there  might  be  no  doubt 
about  so  grave  a  charge,  Fremont's  order  was  quoted  ver- 
batim in  the  Adjutant-General's  report.  Yet  this  piece 


LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

of  extraordinary  misconduct  failed  to  elicit  further  official 
notice.  Had  Lincoln  paid  any  public  attention  to  it  what- 
soever, nothing  short  of  Othello's  sentence  upon  Cassio, 

"  I  love  thee, 
But  never  more  be  officer  of  mine," 

could  have  done  justice  to  the  occasion. 

In  a  wholly  different  spirit  did  the  President  approach 
Fremont's  removal.  We  scrutinize  his  conduct,  in  vain, 
for  traces  of  the  personal  resentment  to  which  any  other 
Executive  would  doubtless,  under  the  circumstances,  have 
given  way.  Even  after  Fremont's  fate  had  been  decided, 
Mr.  Lincoln  attached  conditions  that  left  the  General 
ample  chance  for  escape.  With  the  order  recalling  him 
and  appointing  General  Hunter  temporarily  to  his  com- 
mand,35 were  enclosed  private  instructions  for  General 
Curtis,  who,  from  St.  Louis,  was  to  manage  the  transfer. 
"  If,"  wrote  the  President,  "  when  General  Fremont  shall 
be  reached  by  the  messenger  —  yourself  or  any  one  sent 
by  you  —  he  shall  then  have,  in  personal  command,  fought 
and  won  a  battle,  or  shall  then  be  actually  in  a  battle,  or 
shall  then  be  in  the  immediate  presence  of  the  enemy  in 
expectation  of  a  battle,  it  is  not  to  be  delivered,  but  held 
for  further  orders."36  Whether  this  lenity  was  due  to 
ordinary  military  foresight,  to  Secretary  Cameron's  pro- 
mises, to  the  protests  by  Fremont's  supporters  against  his 
repeatedly  rumored  removal,  to  mutterings  in  the  army 
of  resistance  against  such  an  order,  to  Lincoln's  sense  of 
justice,  to  his  good-will  toward  the  General,  or  to  his  prac- 
tice of  not  displacing  favorite  commanders  until  they 
had  fully  manifested  their  incapacity,  or  whether  these  all 
and  several  entered  into  the  President's  motives,  is  matter 
for  speculation  only.  The  essential  facts  are  that  Mr. 
Lincoln,  so  far  from  trying  to  get  rid  of  Fremont  as  a 
dangerous  rival,  did,  to  the  very  end,  what  lay  in  his 
power  to  save  him  ;  and  that  the  General's  downfall  at 
last  must  be  ascribed  to  circumstances  which  were  as 
much  under  his  control  as  they  were  beyond  the  Presi- 


THE   PATHFINDER  313 

dent's.  For,  when  the  officer  whom  Curtis  had  sent  over- 
took the  "  Mississippi  Army  "  in  the  field,  it  had  neither 
fought  a  battle,  nor  was  it  within  striking  distance  of  the 
enemy.  The  order  of  removal  was  therefore  delivered ; 
and  Fremont  relinquished  his  command  with  a  dignity, 
as  well  as  a  subordination,  so  perfect  that  they  compelled 
praise  from  many  who  had,  not  without  reason,  looked 
for  different  behavior.37 

Though  the  expected  outbreak  among  the  western 
troops  failed  to  occur,  men  and  officers  alike  —  with  cer- 
tain exceptions  —  deplored  their  commander's  downfall. 
It  was  an  excited  camp  to  which  Fremont  addressed  his 
farewell  message.  He  may  have  lacked  military  capacity, 
but  he  possessed,  in  an  eminent  degree,  one  attribute,  if  no 
other,  of  good  generalship  —  the  art  of  endearing  himself 
to  his  soldiers.  Loud  and  bitter  were  their  denunciations 
of  the  government ;  but  more  formidable  still,  as  the  news 
spread,  became  the  outcry  of  disapproval  from  Fremont's 
political  admirers.  Their  hopes  centered  in  "  the  states- 
man-soldier "  —  to  use  Wendell  Phillips's  appellation  — 
as  in  no  other  leader,  during  the  autumn  of  1861 ;  and 
many  of  the  extreme  anti-slavery  men  among  them  could 
not  or  would  not  see  that  he  had  been  at  fault.  "  If  Fre- 
mont has  been  guilty  of  mistakes,  or  even  of  crimes," 
wrote  an  able  journalist,  at  the  time,  "  there  are  a  million 
men  now  living  who  will  forgive  him,  in  consideration 
of  his  proclamation  and  his  deed  of  manumission —  docu- 
ments which  will  be  as  immortal  as  the  Declaration  of 
Independence."  *  What  seemed  to  increase  this  obliga- 
tion a  hundredfold  was  the  belief  that  he  had  fallen  a 
martyr  to  the  anti-slavery  cause.  Even  public  men  who 
should  have  known  better  looked  upon  Fremont  as  a  friend 
of  freedom,  sacrificed  to  appease  the  slave  power.  "  What- 
ever may  have  been  his  acts,  or  omissions  to  act,"  wrote 
Senator  Grimes,  one  of  these  blunderers,  "  there  is  no  ques- 
tion in  my  mind  that  the  real  cause  of  his  removal  was 
the  proclamation  he  issued,  and  which  he  failed  to  modify 


3 14      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

in  accordance  with  the  President's  wishes.  That  was  the 
great  sin  for  which  he  was  punished."  M  A  similar  view  was 
voiced  by  Whittier,  the  laureate  of  Abolitionism,  in  the 
well-known  lines :  — 

"  Thy  error,  Fre'mont,  simply  was  to  act 
A  brave  man's  part,  without  the  statesman's  tact, 
And,  taking  counsel  but  of  common  sense, 
To  strike  at  cause  as  well  as  consequence." 

The  role  of  picturesque  victim  to  governmental  injustice 
was,  as  we  have  seen,  not  new  to  Fremont.  He  had,  in 
fact,  mastered  the  part.  So  now,  as  at  other  monumental 
moments  of  his  career,  the  "  Pathfinder  "  rose,  in  certain 
eyes  at  least,  to  heroic  stature.  From  influential  Radicals, 
on  all  sides,  came  expressions  of  esteem  for  him,  and  of 
censure  for  the  administration.  Press,  pulpit,  and  plat- 
form, together  with  both  houses  of  Congress,  made  liberal 
contributions  for  a  brief  season  to  the  work  of  exalting 
Fremont,  while  putting  down  Lincoln.  How  deeply,  too, 
that  spirit  moved  the  people,  in  certain  sections  of  the 
country,  may  be  gathered  from  this  letter,  written  by 
Richard  Smith  of  the  Cincinnati  Gazette  to  his  friend, 
Secretary  Chase,  a  few  days  after  the  removal :  — 

"Could  you  have  been  among  the  people  yesterday 
and  witnessed  the  excitement,  could  you  have  seen  sober 
citizens  pulling  from  their  walls  and  trampling  under  foot 
the  portrait  of  the  President,  and  could  you  hear  to-day 
the  expressions  of  all  classes  of  men  —  of  all  political 
parties,  you  would,  I  think,  feel  as  I  feel,  and  as  every 
sincere  friend  of  the  government  must  feel,  alarmed. 
What  meaneth  this  burning  of  the  President  in  effigy, 
by  citizens  who  have  hitherto  sincerely  and  enthusiasti- 
cally supported  the  war?  What  meaneth  these  boister- 
ous outbursts  of  indignation,  and  these  low  mutterings 
favorable  to  a  Western  Confederacy  that  we  hear?  Why 
this  sudden  check  to  enlistments?  Why  this  rejection  of 
treasury  notes  by  German  citizens  ?  Wrhy  is  it  that  on 
the  6th  of  November,  1861,  not  one  dollar  was  subscribed 


THE   PATHFINDER  315 

here  to  the  national  loan  ?  Why  is  it  that  it  would  not  be 
safe  to  go  into  places  where  the  Germans  resort,  and  pub- 
licly express  an  opinion  favorable  to  the  President  ?  Why 
this  sudden,  this  extraordinary,  this  startling  change  in 
public  sentiment,  on  'change,  in  the  street,  in  the  banking- 
house,  in  the  palace  and  the  cottage,  in  country  and  city  ? 
Is  it  not  time  for  the  President  to  stop  and  consider 
whether,  as  this  is  a  government  of  the  people,  it  is  not 
unsafe  to  disregard  and  override  public  sentiment,  as  has 
been  done  in  the  case  of  General  Fremont?  The  public 
consider  that  Fremont  has  been  made  a  martyr  of.  ... 
Consequently  he  is  now,  so  far  as  the  West  is  concerned, 
the  most  popular  man  in  the  country.  He  is  to  the  West 
what  Napoleon  was  to  France ;  while  the  President  has 
lost  the  confidence  of  the  people."  *° 

For  the  moment,  it  did  indeed  look,  in  some  quarters,  as 
if  Lincoln  had  reaped  the  whirlwind.  But  was  this  storm 
fierce  enough  to  bear  out  Judge  Hoadly's  warning  that  to 
displace  Fremont  might  result  in  making  him  President  ? 

The  next  election  was  still  three  years  distant.  As  this, 
for  the  time  being,  precluded  political  operations,  Fremont's 
supporters  directed  their  energies  toward  securing  his 
restoration  to  active  service.  Some  of  his  partisans  in 
Missouri  held  secret  meetings  that  did  not  stop  short  of 
planning  treason  in  their  favorite's  behalf  ;  but  most  of  his 
friends  throughout  the  North  contented  themselves  with 
the  orderly  presentation  of  his  case.  They  asserted  that 
in  a  purely  military  command  the  General  would  do  jus- 
tice to  his  reputation  ;  and  this  claim  Mr.  Lincoln,  despite 
what  had  happened,  was  willing  to  treat  with  indulgence. 
So,  after  the  first  pressure  upon  the  President  had  subsided, 
we  find  him,  one  day,  calling  into  the  Executive  Cham- 
ber Henry  C.  Bowen,  the  proprietor  of  the  Independent, 
who  happened  to  be  passing  the  open  door,  on  his  way  to 
another  office. 

"  Come  in,"  said  Mr.  Lincoln,  in  his  unceremonious 
j  "  y°u  are  the  very  man  I  want  to  see.  I  have  been 


3i6      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

thinking  a  great  deal  lately  about  Fremont ;  and  I  want 
to  ask  you,  as  an  old  friend  of  his,  what  is  the  thought 
about  his  continuing  inactive." 

"  Mr.  President,"  was  the  reply,  "  I  will  say  to  you 
frankly  that  a  large  class  of  people  feel  that  General 
Fremont  has  been  badly  treated,  and  nothing  would  give 
more  satisfaction,  both  to  him  and  to  his  friends,  than 
his  reappointment  to  a  command  commensurate,  in  some 
degree,  with  his  rank  and  ability." 

"  Do  you  think,"  asked  Mr.  Lincoln,  "  he  would  accept 
an  inferior  position  to  that  he  occupied  in  Missouri?" 

"  I  have  that  confidence  in  General  Fremont's  patriotism 
that  I  venture  to  promise  for  him  in  advance,"  was  Mr. 
Bowen's  earnest  reply. 

"  Well,"  said  the  President  thoughtfully,  "  I  have  had 
it  on  my  mind  for  some  time  that  Fremont  should  be 
given  a  chance  to  redeem  himself.  The  great  hue  and 
cry  about  him  has  been  concerning  his  expenditure  of  the 
public  money.  I  have  looked  into  the  matter  a  little,  and 
I  can't  see  as  he  has  done  any  worse  or  any  more,  in  that 
line,  than  our  eastern  commanders.  At  any  rate,  he  shall 
have  another  trial."  41 

Shortly  after  this  interview,  when  the  Mountain  De- 
partment was  carved  out  of  the  steeps  and  forests  of 
western  Maryland,  western  Virginia,  eastern  Ohio,  east- 
ern Kentucky,  and  eastern  Tennessee,42  the  command  of  it 
was  appropriately  enough  assigned  to  the  "Pathfinder."43 
Here  he  figured,  not  greatly  to  his  credit,  in  the  govern- 
ment's disastrous  experiment  of  opposing  to  "  Stonewall " 
Jackson  the  three  independent  departmental  commands 
of  Fremont,  Banks,  and  McDowell.  Their  efforts  to 
entrap  that  brilliant  campaigner,  in  his  dash  down  the 
Shenandoah  valley,  were  a  succession  of  failures  ;  and 
naturally  so,  for  only  the  most  efficient  cooperation  of  the 
Union  generals  could  have  secured  a  different  finish  to 
the  intricate  strategy  imposed  upon  them  from  Washing- 
ton. When  at  last  it  appeared  as  if  Jackson  might  be 


THE   PATHFINDER  317 

caught  between  the  converging  columns  of  McDowell 
and  Fremont,  those  officers  were  ordered  to  the  only  out- 
let through  which  the  then  retreating  Confederates  could 
escape  from  the  valley.  McDowell  reached  his  appointed 
post  in  time ;  but  Fremont  arrived  just  too  late,  and  their 
alert  foe  slipped  between  them.  "  Too  late  "  has  ever  been 
a  sorry  commentary  when  the  day  is  lost.  What  shall 
we  say,  then,  of  a  general  to  whom  it  must  be  applied 
thrice  within  the  year  ?  Not  a  little,  moreover,  of  this  last 
failure  was  due  to  Fremont's  constitutional  disrespect  for 
orders.  According  to  his  instructions  from  the  President, 
he  was  to  advance  by  a  route  that  would  have  brought  his 
line  of  march  between  the  enemy  and  the  southern  exit 
from  the  valley,  for  which  Jackson  was  headed.  Taking 
what  he  believed  to  be  a  more  practicable  road,  without 
notifying  Mr.  Lincoln  of  so  important  a  modification  of 
his  orders,  Fremont  made  a  detour  that  led  him  several 
days'  march  away  from  the  Confederate  line  of  retreat, 
and  brought  him  out,  when  he  did  reach  the  strategic 
point,  in  the  rear  of  the  enemy,  just  as  the  last  of  Jack- 
son's troops  were  leaving  that  place. 

Though  Fremont  failed,  his  reasons,  as  usual,  were 
excellent.  The  road  prescribed  by  the  President  had  — 
we  are  told  —  been  "obstructed";  it  would  have  been 
"  fatal "  —  in  the  General's  opinion — to  a  line  of  supplies  ; 
and  to  have  taken  it  —  he  asserted  —  must,  under  any 
conditions,  have  defeated  the  end  in  view."  When  Mr. 
Lincoln  said  to  Major  Zagonyi :  — 

"  General  Fremont  ought  to  have  informed  me  of  his 
plans,  and  of  the  reasons  why  he  could  not  obey  my 
orders  "  ;  he  was  answered :  — 

"  Mr.  President,  I  am  instructed  by  General  Fremont 
to  say  that  he  could  not  spare  any  of  his  officers,  nor  trust 
the  telegraph ;  and,  furthermore,  to  say  that  all  the  intel- 
ligence of  his  movements  which  has  been  placed  in  the 
office  of  the  Adjutant-General  has  reached  the  enemy  soon 
afterwards,"  to 


3i8       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

But  —  it  has  been  urged  —  there  was  still  ample  time, 
even  after  the  detour,  to  cut  off  Jackson's  worn-out  and 
bedraggled  forces.  To  which  Fremont  replies  that  the 
weather  was  so  stormy,  the  roads  so  heavy,  the  men  so 
weakened  by  fatigue  and  want  of  food,  that  a  whole  day 
had  to  be  lost  in  resting  them  on  the  march.46  All  these 
things  might  be  pleaded  in  mitigation  before  a  court- 
martial.  They  are  as  dust  in  the  balance,  however,  at 
the  bar  of  military  history,  where  commanders  are  judged, 
not  by  the  plausibility  of  the  reasons  that  they  assign  for 
their  defeats,  but  by  the  victories  that  they  have  snatched, 
with  straitened  means,  from  unpropitious  circumstance. 
Before  this  tribunal  the  Fremont  of  the  Mountain  cam- 
paign, like  the  Fremont  who  warred  a  hundred  days  in 
Missouri,  stands  condemned. 

After  Jackson's  escape,  the  President  realized  his  own 
share  in  the  disaster.  It  was  evident  that  the  three  divided 
commands,  which  had  supported  one  another  so  loosely, 
should  be  united,  at  once,  under  one  general  in  the  field. 
This  honor  might  properly  have  fallen  to  Fremont,  the 
ranking  officer  of  the  group ;  but  Lincoln,  for  obvious 
reasons,  looked  elsewhere.  He  selected  Major-General 
John  Pope,  who  had  made  a  good  record  in  the  West,  to 
lead  the  combined  forces.  They  constituted,  for  the  most 
part,  the  newly  organized  Army  of  Virginia.  It  was 
divided,  to  correspond  with  the  former  departments,  into 
three  army  corps,  under  the  command,  respectively,  of 
Fremont,  Banks,  and  McDowell.47  These  officers  were  all 
Pope's  seniors  in  the  service.  Banks  and  McDowell, 
nevertheless,  bowed  to  the  President's  wishes ;  but  Fre- 
mont, belying  the  good  Mr.  Bo  wen's  "  confidence  "  in  his 
patriotism,  declined  —  as  Mr.  Lincoln  had  surmised  he 
would  —  to  "  accept  an  inferior  position."  On  receipt  of 
the  order,  the  General  forthwith  telegraphed  to  the  Sec- 
retary of  War :  — 

"  I  respectfully  ask  that  the  President  will  relieve  me 
of  my  present  command.  I  submit  for  his  consideration 


THE   PATHFINDER  319 

that  the  position  assigned  me  by  his  recent  order  is  sub- 
ordinate and  inferior  to  those  hitherto  conceded  me,  and 
not  fairly  corresponding  with  the  rank  I  hold  in  the  army. 
I  further  desire  to  call  his  attention  to  the  fact  that  to 
remain  in  the  subordinate  command  to  which  I  am  now 
assigned  would  virtually  and  largely  reduce  my  rank  and 
consideration  in  the  service  of  the  country.  For  these 
reasons  I  earnestly  request  that  the  President  will  not 
require  the  order  to  take  effect  so  far  as  I  am  concerned, 
but  will  consent  immediately  to  relieve  me."  ** 

This  missive  was  a  blunder.  The  ambitious  man  who 
penned  it  must  have  lost  sight,  for  the  moment,  not  only 
of  what  he  owed  to  his  country,  but  also  of  what  he 
owed  to  himself.49  He  was  plainly  in  the  wrong  on  a  ques- 
tion that  involved  no  political  differences,  and  that  could, 
therefore,  not  so  easily  be  befogged  by  partisan  prejudice. 
Fremont  had  gone  the  whole  length  of  his  tether.  There 
is  no  mistaking  the  hand  that  pulled  him  up  short,  though 
it  was  ostensibly  that  of  Mr.  Stanton.  The  Secretary  of 
War  answered  promptly  :  — 

"  Your  telegram  requesting  to  be  relieved  from  duty 
has  been  received  and  laid  before  the  President,  who 
directs  me  to  say  that  Congress  having  by  special  resolu- 
tion vested  him  with  authority  to  assign  the  chief  command 
between  officers  of  the  same  grade  as  he  might  consider 
best  for  the  service  of  the  country,  without  regard  to  pri- 
ority of  rank,  he  exercised  that  authority  in  respect  to  the 
Army  of  Virginia,  as  he  has  done  in  other  instances,  in 
the  manner  which,  in  his  judgment,  was  required  for  the 
service,  and  without  design  to  detract  from  the  '  rank  and 
consideration'  of  any  general.50  General  Pope  was  the 
junior  in  rank,  but  of  the  same  grade  not  only  of  yourself, 
but  also  of  Generals  Banks  and  McDowell,  neither  of 
whom  have  considered  their  rank  and  consideration  in  the 
service  of  the  country  as  a  condition  upon  which  they 
would  withdraw  from  that  service. 

"  The  President  regrets'  that  any  officer  in  the  service 


320      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

should  withdraw  from  the  service  of  his  country,  in  any 
position  where  he  is  lawfully  assigned  by  his  commander- 
in-chief ;  but  he  cannot  consistently  with  his  sense  of  duty 
grant  your  request  that  an  order,  made  according  to  his 
judgment  for  the  welfare  of  the  nation,  should  not  be  re- 
quired to  take  effect,  so  far  as  you  are  concerned.  The 
obligation  of  duty  is  the  same  upon  all  officers  in  the  ser- 
vice, whatever  their  rank,  and  if  there  be  any  difference, 
it  should  be  most  readily  observed  by  those  of  highest 
rank.  Your  request,  therefore,  to  be  relieved  from  your 
present  command  is  granted. 

"  You  will  turn  over  your  command  and  orders  to  the 
officer  next  highest  in  rank  to  yourself,  and  direct  him  to 
report  to  the  department  for  further  orders."  51 

A  general's  popularity  must  be  deep-rooted  indeed  to 
survive  such  a  blast. 

Notwithstanding  his  misconduct  and  his  failures,  many 
of  the  Radicals  clung  to  Fremont.  He  was  still  their 
champion  —  political  and  militant,  the  leader  on  whom 
they  depended  for  the  ultimate  triumph  of  Abolition.  They 
applauded  him  accordingly,  without  reservation,  but  their 
faith  in  his  soldierly  qualities,  be  it  said,  was  no  longer 
shared  by  the  President.  "  I  thought  well  of  Fremont,"  he 
remarked,  chatting  confidentially  one  evening  with  a  few 
friends.  "  Even  now  I  think  well  of  his  impulses.  I  only 
think  he  is  the  prey  of  wicked  and  designing  men,  and  I 
think  he  has  absolutely  no  military  capacity." 52  This 
opinion,  though  expressed  more  than  a  year  after  the 
Shenandoah  campaign,  was  probably  held  by  Mr.  Lincoln 
at  the  conclusion  of  that  fiasco  ;  yet  we  fail  to  find  among 
his  open  utterances  a  word  that  might  hurt  the  General's 
sensitive  pride  or  impair  his  reputation.  Meanwhile  Fre- 
mont's supporters  left  no  stone  unturned  in  their  efforts 
to  secure  his  restoration.  From  the  East,  as  well  as  from 
the  West,  came  delegations,  petitions,  letters,  telegrams, 
and  what  not,  urging  that  he  be  sent  to  the  field  at  the 
head  of  another  army,  or  be  assigned  to  some  responsible 


THE    PATHFINDER  321 

executive  post  under  the  administration.  For  a  time,  Mr. 
Lincoln  readily  disposed  of  these  appeals.  When,  for  in- 
stance, Congressman  George  W.  Julian  of  Indiana,  in  the 
spring  of  1863,  expressed  his  regret  that  Fremont  had 
not  received  another  command,53  the  President  replied 
that  as  he  did  not  know  where  to  place  the  General,  he 
was  reminded  of  the  young  man  who,  when  advised  by 
his  father  to  take  a  wife,  answered,  "  Whose  wife  shall  I 
take?"  Mr.  Lincoln  proceeded  to  explain  that  a  suitable 
appointment  could  be  provided  for  Fremont  only  by  re- 
moving some  other  general,  which  he  did  not  wish  to  do. 

"  I  remarked,"  reports  Mr.  Julian,  "  that  I  was  very 
sorry  if  this  was  true,  and  that  it  was  unfortunate  for  our 
cause,  as  I  believed  his  restoration  to  duty  would  stir  the 
country  as  no  other  appointment  could." 

The  President  might  have  become  reminiscent  as  to  the 
General's  stirring  powers,  but  he  contented  himself  with 
saying :  — 

"It  would  stir  the  country  on  one  side,  and  stir  it 
the  other  way,  on  the  other.  It  would  please  Fremont's 
friends,  and  displease  the  Conservatives ;  and  that  is  all 
I  can  see  in  the  stirring  argument." 54 

Mr.  Lincoln  replied  after  a  similar  fashion,  some  weeks 
later,  when  a  St.  Louis  mass  meeting  "  resolved  "  that 
Fremont  and  several  other  anti-slavery  generals  had  been 
"  systematically  kept  out  of  command."  To  the  committee 
which  presented  these  resolutions  the  President  senten- 
tiously  said  that  there  were  "  more  pegs  than  holes  to  put 
them  in."  The  officers  mentioned  had,  he  added,  placed 
themselves  by  their  own  actions  in  the  positions  they  then 
occupied,  and  however  willing  he  might  be  to  send  them 
to  the  field,  it  could  not  be  done  without  working  injustice 
to  those  whom  they  would  displace.55  This  was  unan- 
swerable. It  seemed  as  if,  by  a  neat  application  of  the 
physical  law  that  inhibits  two  bodies  from  occupying  the 
same  space  at  the  same  time,  Lincoln  had  effectually 
shelved  Fremont  or,  more  accurately  speaking,  fastened 


322       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

him  to  the  shelf  upon  which  the  General  had  placed  him- 
self. 

Still  the  extreme  anti-slavery  men  were  far  from  content 
to  leave  their  idol  in  retirement.  If  there  was  no  suitable 
post  for  Fremont,  why  —  they  queried  —  not  create  one  ? 
So  said  Horace  Greeley,  William  Cullen  Bryant,  Parke 
Godwin,  Peter  Cooper,  and  other  prominent  citizens,  who 
signed  a  memorial  suggesting  that  the  General  should  be 
commissioned  to  organize  and  command  an  army  of  negro 
troops.  The  delegation  that  carried  the  petition  to  the 
President  was  introduced  by  Senator  Charles  Sumner,  to 
whom  Lincoln,  after  the  interviews,  addressed  his  answer. 
This  letter  evinces  how  the  President's  good-will  toward 
Fremont,  no  less  than  his  desire  to  conciliate  the  General's 
powerful  friends,  brought  him  to  the  inconsistency  of  again 
contemplating  the  appointment  of  that  officer  to  a  military 
command.  It  reads,  in  part : — 

"  In  relation  to  the  matter  spoken  of  Saturday  morning 
and  this  morning  —  to  wit,  the  raising  of  colored  troops 
in  the  North,  with  the  understanding  that  they  shall  be 
commanded  by  General  Fremont  —  I  have  to  say :  — 

"  That  while  it  is  very  objectionable,  as  a  general  rule, 
to  have  troops  raised  on  any  special  terms,  such  as  to  serve 
only  under  a  particular  commander  or  only  at  a  particular 
place  or  places,  yet  I  would  forego  the  objection  in  this 
case  upon  a  fair  prospect  that  a  large  force  of  this  sort 
could  thereby  be  the  more  rapidly  raised ; 

"  That  being  raised,  say  to  the  number  of  ten  thousand, 
I  would  very  cheerfully  send  them  to  the  field  under 
General  Fremont,  assigning  him  a  department,  made  or 
to  be  made,  with  such  white  force  also  as  I  might  be  able 
to  put  in."  M 

Nothing  came  of  this,  however,  for  the  enlistment  of 
negro  troops  was  entrusted,  in  good  time,  to  safer  men 
than  the  "  Pathfinder." 

Another  notable  attempt  to  get  Fremont  back  into 
active  service  brought  Wendell  Phillips,  the  Rev.  Mon- 


THE   PATHFINDER  323 

cure  D.  Con  way,  F.  W.  Bird,  Dr.  Howe,  and  others  to 
Washington.  Calling  on  the  President,  they  requested  him 
to  remove  Edward  Stanley  from  the  military  governor- 
ship of  North  Carolina,  on  the  ground  that  he  was  not 
acting  in  sympathy  with  the  then  recently  issued  procla- 
mation of  emancipation.  Mr.  Lincoln  asked  the  delega- 
tion who  was  wanted  in  Stanley's  place.  They  promptly 
answered,  "  Fremont." 

"  Gentlemen,"  said  the  President,  "  it  is  generally  the 
case  that  a  man  who  begins  a  work  is  not  the  best  man  to 
carry  it  on  to  a  successful  termination.  I  believe  it  was 
so  in  the  case  of  Moses  —  was  n't  it  ?  —  who  got  the  chil- 
dren of  Israel  out  of  Egypt,  but  the  Lord  selected  some- 
body else  to  bring  them  to  their  journey's  end.  A  pioneer 
has  hard  work  to  do,  and  generally  gets  so  battered  and 
spattered  that  people  prefer  another  man,  though  they 
may  accept  the  principle.  Don't  understand  me  as  having, 
myself,  the  least  objection  to  Mr.  Fremont ;  but  he  is  so 
associated  with  Abolitionism  that  many  people  object  to 
the  man,  even  though  they  go  his  way."  57 

Stanley's  office,  like  the  other  coveted  places,  did  not 
fall  to  Fremont;  and  his  disappointed  adherents  grum- 
bled more  than  ever.  At  last,  applying  Lincoln's  biblical 
citation  to  the  President  himself,  they  diligently  spread 
the  opinion  that  he  ought  to  give  way,  on  the  completion 
of  his  first  term,  to  some  other  leader.  Who  that  leader 
should  be  had  become  a  fixed  idea  in  the  Radical  mind. 

By  the  spring  of  1864,  Union  opposition  to  Lincoln's 
renomination  centered  chiefly  around  Fremont.  He  suc- 
ceeded to  what  remained  of  the  following  which  Secretary 
Chase,  as  we  have  seen,  had  wisely  resigned.  In  fact,  no 
sooner  had  the  Ohio  man  actually  withdrawn  his  candi- 
dature than  the  "  Pathfinder's  "  little  lightning-rod  was 
pushed  up  into  the  presidential  heavens.  Fremont's  name 
became  a  rallying-cry  for  such  of  the  Radicals  as  were 
out  of  patience  with  the  President's  cautious  attitude 
toward  slavery  ;  for  such  of  the  Conservatives  as  believed, 


324      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

or  pretended  to  believe,  that  Lincoln's  reelection  would 
be  a  menace  to  Republican  institutions  ;  and  for  such 
political  and  private  malcontents,  generally,  as  had  been 
unavoidably  created  by  the  exigencies  of  a  war  adminis- 
tration. These  discontented  elements  now  drew  together. 

O 

With  a  view  to  influencing  the  regular  Republican  Con- 
vention M  that  was  to  meet  at  Baltimore  on  the  7th  of 
June,  they  assembled  on  May  31,  in  Cleveland,  for  what 
they  called  a  "  Mass  Convention."  This  body  by  acclama- 
tion nominated  General  Fremont  for  the  presidency,  and 
General  John  Cochrane  of  New  York  —  a  few  dissenting 
—  for  the  vice-presidency. 

The  candidates  hastened  to  issue  their  letters  of  accept- 
ance, which  appeared  three  days  before  the  Baltimore 
Convention.  What  Fremont  wrote  seemed  tinged  with 
the  yellow  of  his  grudge  against  Lincoln.  The  President 
was  here  accused  of  creating  a  schism  in  the  party  by  not 
remaining  "faithful  to  the  principles  he  was  elected  to 
defend."  His  administration  was  severely  arraigned  for 
its  "  disregard  of  constitutional  rights,"  for  "  its  violation 
of  personal  liberty  and  the  liberty  of  the  press,"  its 
"  abandonment  of  the  right  of  asylum,"  its  "  feebleness," 
"  want  of  principle,"  "  incapacity,  and  selfishness."  All  of 
which  led  up  smoothly  enough  to  the  General's  ultima- 
tum :  — 

"If  the  Convention  at  Baltimore  will  nominate  any 
man  whose  past  life  justifies  a  well-grounded  confidence 
in  his  fidelity  to  our  cardinal  principles,  there  is  no  reason 
why  there  should  be  any  division  among  the  really  patri- 
otic men  of  the  country.  To  any  such  I  shall  be  most 
happy  to  give  a  cordial  and  active  support.  My  own 
decided  preference  is  to  aid  in  this  way,  and  not  to  be 
myself  a  candidate.  But  if  Mr.  Lincoln  should  be  nomi- 
nated,—  as  I  believe  it  would  be  fatal  to  the  country  to 
indorse  a  policy  and  renew  a  power  which  has  cost  us  the 
lives  of  thousands  of  men,  and  needlessly  put  the  country 
on  the  road  to  bankruptcy,  —  there  will  remain  no  other 


THE   PATHFINDER  325 

alternative  but  to  organize  against  him  every  element 
of  conscientious  opposition  with  the  view  to  prevent  the 
misfortune  of  his  reelection."59 

This  shaft  fell  wide  of  the  mark.  So  far  as  its  effect 
upon  the  Baltimore  Convention  was  concerned,  it  might 
as  well  never  have  been  discharged.  For  that  body  re- 
nominated  Abraham  Lincoln  by  a  unanimous  vote,  on 
the  first  ballot. 

If  the  President  felt  aggrieved  at  Fremont's  behavior, 
he  made  no  visible  sign.  Yet  the  rancor  of  the  General's 
attacks  upon  him  and  upon  his  administration  was  in 
striking  contrast  to  the  consideration  with  which  the 
"Pathfinder"  had  uniformly  been  treated.  Indeed,  at 
this,  the  very  climax  of  Fremont's  opposition,  Lincoln's 
sole  recorded  comment  was  a  jest.  It  related  to  the  Cleve- 
land "Mass  Convention," — "mass"  in  name  only,  of 
which  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  arch-Radical  though  he 
had  been,  said  in  the  Liberator,  "  There  never  was  a  more 
abortive  or  a  more  ludicrous  gathering  held,  politically 
speaking."  Very  few  representative  people  attended ;  and 
the  assembly,  instead  of  numbering  thousands  as  appears 
to  have  been  expected,  consisted,  at  no  time,  of  more  than 
four  hundred  men.  When  this  disparity  was  mentioned 
by  Congressman  Deming,  in  a  chat  with  the  President, 
the  number  caught  Mr.  Lincoln's  attention.  Putting  on 
his  spectacles,  he  opened  the  bible  on  his  desk,  turned, 
after  a  moment's  search,  to  the  twenty-second  chapter  of 
the  First  Book  of  Samuel,  and  read  in  a  waggish  tone :  — 

"  And  every  one  that  was  in  distress,  and  every  one 
that  was  in  debt,  and  every  one  that  was  discontented, 
gathered  themselves  unto  him ;  and  he  became  a  captain 
over  them :  and  there  were  with  him  about  four  hundred 
men."60 

Auspicious  as  the  President's  comparison  may,  from 
the  historical  point  of  view,  have  been  for  Fremont,  that 
leader,  unlike  the  chieftain  in  the  Cave  of  Adullam,  did 
not  become  a  ruler  in  Israel.  Those  who  might  have 


326       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

encouraged  the  General  to  "  set  up  for  himself,"  as  Mrs. 
Fremont  appears  to  have  expressed  it  in  1861,  understood 
him,  and  Lincoln  too,  somewhat  better  in  1864.  Even 
the  "  Pathfinder's "  old  friends  the  Abolitionists  refused 
— with  certain  notable  exceptions — to  follow  him  on  this 
last  and  stoniest  of  his  trails.  They  realized,  as  soon  as 
the  Democrats  put  forth  their  candidate  and  their  plat- 
form, that  emancipation  would  triumph,  if  at  all,  through 
Abraham  Lincoln.  Reluctantly,  in  some  instances  half- 
mutinously,  his  opponents  within  the  party  came  to  the 
support  of  the  great  statesman  whose  course  they  had 
condemned ;  but  whose  hold  on  "  the  plain  people,"  and 
whose  perfect  mastery  of  the  situation,  had  made  him  the 
indispensable  man  of  the  hour.  As  for  Fremont,  he  found 
himself,  before  the  canvass  had  rightly  begun,  that  most 
humiliating  of  political  spectacles  —  a  nominee  without  a 
party.  Nothing  that  he  contrived  could  impart  serious- 
ness or  dignky  to  his  situation.  When  the  issues  between 
Lincoln  and  McClellan  were  sharply  denned,  moreover, 
his  position  of  antagonism  to  the  President  became,  for  a 
loyal  Republican  leader,  clearly  untenable.  So,  early  in 
the  autumn,  Fremont  withdrew  from  the  canvass.61  Even 
this  step,  however,  was  taken  with  bad  grace.  For  he  was 
careful  to  explain  that  he  retired  "not  to  aid  in  the 
triumph  of  Mr.  Lincoln,"  but  to  do  his  part  "towards 
preventing  the  election  of  the  Democratic  candidate."  As 
an  illustration,  perhaps,  of  how  he  would  perform  this 
extraordinary  feat,  the  writer  went  on  to  say :  — 

"  In  respect  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  I  continue  to  hold  exactly 
the  sentiments  contained  in  my  letter  of  acceptance.  I 
consider  that  his  administration  has  been  politically, 
militarily,  and  financially  a  failure,  and  that  its  necessary 
continuance  is  a  cause  of  regret  for  the  country." 62 

With  this  last  futile  stroke  at  the  man  who  had  so  com- 
pletely routed  him,  Fremont  disappears  from  the  stage  of 
national  politics,  disappointed  alike  in  his  ambition  and 
his  spite. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON 

THE  dead  level  of  disappointment  which  marked  the 
opening  operations  of  the  Civil  War,  on  the  northern  side, 
was  relieved  by  one  brief  and  comparatively  brilliant  cam- 
paign. This  took  place  in  upper  western  Virginia,  where 
Federal  troops  drove  less  than  their  number  of  Confed- 
erates before  them  in  a  succession  of  engagements.  Phi- 
lippi,  Laurel  Hill,  Rich  Mountain,  and  Carrick's  Ford 
were,  it  is  true,  mere  skirmishes  when  viewed  beside  the 
great  battles  of  the  war  that  followed ;  but  in  the  summer 
of  1861  they  were  hailed  throughout  the  North  as  impor- 
tant victories.  To  judge  by  results,  they  were  not  so  insig- 
nificant, either,  as  at  first  glance  now  seems  to  be  the  case. 
For  that  decisive  little  campaign  shattered  a  Confederate 
army,  rescued  what  before  long  became  the  State  of  West 
Virginia  from  secession,  infused  renewed  courage  into 
northern  hearts,  and  formally  introduced  to  Union  men 
their  first  military  idol  —  George  Brinton  McClellan.  As 
Major-General  in  command  of  the  Department  of  the 
Ohio,1  that  officer  had  won  some  of  these  successes,  and 
had  received  credit  for  them  all.  Their  moral  effect  on  the 
country,  be  it  said,  was  heightened  not  a  little,  at  the  time, 
by  the  trumpet-like  tones  of  his  proclamations,  addresses, 
and  despatches,  which  followed  one  another,  during  the 
campaign,  in  rapid  succession.2  Bulletins  fell  as  thick  as 
bullets.  The  General  carried  a  portable  printing-press, 
which  worked  overtime ;  and  its  output  was  disfigured  by 
a  vein  of  exaggeration,  amounting  occasionally  —  as  we 
now  perceive  —  to  bombast.  Amidst  the  jubilation  aroused 
by  his  joyful  tidings,  however,  and  in  the  confusion  of  the 


328       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

gathering  conflict,  these  productions  were  received  at  their 
face  value.  Even  Lieutenant-General  Scott,  the  venerable 
chief  of  the  army,  did  not  scrutinize  them  too  closely.  This 
sudden  triumph  of  an  officer  who  had  once  been  numbered 
among  the  veteran's  most  promising  subalterns  so  moved 
the  old  campaigner  that  he  added  his  praise,  without  re- 
serve, to  the  general  acclaim.  McClellan  was  easily  the 
hero  of  the  hour.  His  vigor  of  rhetoric,  combined,  as  it 
seemed,  with  a  genius  for  tactics,  recalled  to  men's  minds 
the  conqueror  of  Austerlitz.  Reversing  history,  in  their 
enthusiasm,  they  fondly  styled  him  the  "  Young  Napoleon," 
though  he  was  considerably  older  than  Bonaparte  had  been 
at  the  close  of  his  first  campaign  ; 3  and  in  that  same  spirit 
they  turned,  as  by  one  accord,  toward  the  new  prodigy, 
with  high  hopes  of  great  achievements  to  come. 

The  North  was  still  rejoicing  over  McClellan's  victories, 
the  thanks  of  Congress  and  the  congratulations  of  the 
administration  were  still  making  the  rounds  of  an  applaud- 
ing press,  when  the  Union  army  under  McDowell  came  to 
grief  at  the  first  battle  of  Bull  Run.  As  the  routed  volun- 
teers poured  into  Washington,  in  a  state  of  almost  total 
demoralization,  their  first  need  was  evidently  a  new  com- 
mander ;  and  to  provide  one  was  President  Lincoln's  first 
care.  His  choice  naturally  fell  upon  the  popular  favorite, 
the  only  general  officer  who  had,  since  the  war  opened, 
gained  any  distinction.  It  seemed  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  no  less 
than  to  the  country  at  large,  that  this  picturesque  soldier 
was  destined  to  repair  the  disaster  of  July  21,  and  to 
lead  the  reorganized  troops  to  victory.  So  McClellan  re- 
ceived a  hurried  summons  to  the  Capital.  Upon  his  arrival 
he  was  assigned  to  the  command  of  the  newly  created 
Division  of  the  Potomac,  by  far  the  most  responsible  post 
in  the  field.4 

This  promotion,  dazzling  as  it  must  have  been  even  to 
the  man  so  honored  himself,  did  not  rest  upon  those  few 
successful  weeks  in  western  Virginia,  alone.  Some  credit, 
however  slight,  should  doubtless  be  conceded  to  his  earlier 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         329 

history  and  training.  A  graduate  of  West  Point  shortly 
after  the  outbreak  of  the  Mexican  War,  McClellan  had 
seen  active  service  before  his  twentieth  birthday.5  He  had 
distinguished  himself  repeatedly,  though  only  a  second 
lieutenant  of  engineers,  in  General  Scott's  campaign  ;  and 
that  commander's  attention  was,  on  several  occasions, 
called  to  the  youthful  officer's  exploits.  At  the  close  of  the 
Mexican  War,  Captain  McClellan  —  he  was  so  brevetted 
for  gallantry  —  had  entered  upon  eight  busy  years  of 
varied  official  duties.  Serving  with  his  engineer  company 
as  an  instructor  at  West  Point,  assisting  Major  John 
Sanders  in  construction  work  at  Fort  Delaware,  exploring 
the  country  of  the  Upper  Ked  River  under  Captain  Ran- 
dolph B.  Marcy,  making  a  military  inspection  of  Texas 
as  chief  engineer  on  the  staff  of  General  P.  F.  Smith,  sur- 
veying the  coast  of  that  State  for  the  improvement  of  its 
harbors,  exploring  the  Cascade  Mountains  to  determine 
part  of  the  proposed  route  for  the  Pacific  Railroad,  recon- 
noitering  the  West  Indies  in  a  secret  search  for  a  coaling 
station,  and  visiting  Europe  during  the  Crimean  War  as 
one  of  the  three  commissioners  appointed  to  make  military 
observations  abroad,  —  he  had  won,  in  whatever  task  was 
assigned  to  him,  golden  opinions  from  his  superiors.  He 
had  found  time,  moreover,  during  this  period,  busy  as 
it  was,  to  employ  his  pen  with  good  effect.  A  general  me- 
moir on  the  island  of  Hayti,  a  monograph  on  railroad  con- 
struction, Regulations  for  the  Field  Service  of  Cavalry 
in  Time  of  War,  a  Manual  of  Bayonet  Exercise  which 
upon  General  Scott's  urgent  recommendation  was  adopted 
by  the  War  Department  as  an  official  text-book,  and  a 
voluminous  treatise  on  The  Armies  of  Europe,  besides  a 
number  of  minor  reports,  all  bear  testimony  to  his  ability 
no  less  than  to  his  zeal.8  But  in  times  of  peace  army  life 
usually  fails  to  fill  the  measure  of  such  a  man's  ambition. 
Resigning  his  commission  in  1857,7  Captain  McClellan 
had  become  successively  Chief  Engineer  of  the  Illinois 
Central  Railroad  Company,  Vice-President  of  the  same 


330       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

corporation,  and  President  of  the  Eastern  Division  of 
the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  Railroad,  with  headquarters  at 
Cincinnati.  Hence,  when  the  Civil  War  began,  Ohio 
rather  than  New  York  or  Pennsylvania — for  his  services 
were  sought  by  both  the  latter  commonwealths  —  had 
secured  the  honor  of  McClellan's  enrollment.  Promptly 
finding  employment  in  military  preparations  at  Colum- 
bus, he  had  been  appointed  by  Governor  Dennison  Major- 
General  of  State  Volunteers.8  At  the  head  of  the  local 
forces,  he  had  straightway  impressed  those  about  him  with 
a  confidence  in  his  skill  that  as  speedily  found  its  way  to 
the  National  Capital.  For,  presto!  in  just  three  weeks, 
this  militia  officer  had  been  commissioned  —  remarkable 
to  relate  —  a  Major-General  of  the  United  States  Army.9 
In  that  capacity,  he  had  presently  conducted  the  campaign 
into  western  Virginia  which  made  his  name  a  household 
word  all  over  the  Union ;  and  directly  afterward,  a  symbol 
of  security  in  Washington,  when  he  reached  there,  during 
the  week  of  Bull  Run. 

McClellan  and  Lincoln  were  not,  at  the  time,  strangers 
to  each  other.  They  had  met  before  the  war  in  the  con- 
duct of  certain  lawsuits,  which  concerned  the  one  as  an 
officer  of  the  Illinois  Central  Railroad  Company  and  the 
other  as  its  counsel.  On  these  occasions,  the  then  unpol- 
ished lawyer  had  been  an  object  of  interest  to  the  well- 
bred  West  Pointer,  who  many  years  later  thus  touched 
upon  his  early  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Lincoln :  — 

"  More  than  once  I  have  been  with  him  in  out-of-the- 
way  county-seats  where  some  important  case  was  being 
tried,  and,  in  the  lack  of  sleeping  accommodations,  have 
spent  the  night  in  front  of  a  stove  listening  to  the  unceas- 
ing flow  of  anecdotes  from  his  lips.  He  was  never  at  a 
ioss,  and  I  could  never  quite  make  up  my  mind  how  many 
of  them  he  had  really  heard  before,  and  how  many  he 
invented  on  the  spur  of  the  moment.  His  stories  were 
seldom  refined,  but  were  always  to  the  point."  10 

If  memories  of  those  Attic  nights  on  the  Eighth  Judi- 


cial  Circuit  arose  in  the  minds  of  the  two  men  as  General 
McClellan  presented  himself  to  President  Lincoln  at  the 
White  House,  on  the  morning  of  July  27,  1861,  there 
might  also  have  been  recollections  not  quite  so  agreeable. 
When  Abraham  Lincoln  and  Stephen  A.  Douglas  had 
made  their  memorable  canvass  for  the  senatorship  three 
years  before,  one  of  the  "  Little  Giant's "  most  ardent 
supporters  was  George  B.  McClellan.  As  Vice-President 
of  a  railroad  company  which,  for  reasons  of  its  own, 
favored  Douglas,  he  had  employed  in  the  Senator's  behalf 
all  the  influence  and  facilities  at  his  command.  Special 
trains  —  on  occasion  even  McClellan's  private  car  —  had 
carried  the  Democratic  champion  to  the  scenes  of  the 
debates,  while  his  opponent,  in  order  to  keep  these  ap- 
pointments, had  been  reduced  at  times,  as  we  have  seen, 
to  the  necessity  of  begging  rides  on  freight  trains.  This 
discrimination,  though  it  had  greatly  angered  Lincoln's 
friends,  evoked,  so  far  as  we  know,  not  a  complaint  from 
the  man  against  whom  it  was  directed.  Nor  does  the 
closest  scrutiny  into  his  conduct  reveal  a  trace  of  resent- 
ment. He  had  never,  in  all  the  ruck  of  frontier  politics, 
learned  how  to  nurse  personal  grievances.  It  goes  without 
saying,  therefore,  that  in  the  loftier  sphere  of  the  presi- 
dency his  heart,  big  as  it  was,  had  no  room  for  a  private 
grudge.  If  any  misgivings  on  this  score  troubled  General 
McClellan  when  he  made  his  first  bow  in  Washington, 
they  were  speedily  dispelled  by  Mr.  Lincoln's  cordial 
greeting.  Neither  mistrust  for  the  past  nor  doubt  of  the 
future  was  allowed  to  mar  the  harmony  of  their  meeting. 
The  new  commander  glowed  with  the  warmth  of  his  re- 
ception. Touched  by  the  President's  kindness,  he  eagerly 
accepted  the  great  dual  task  assigned  to  him  of  defending 
the  Union  Capital  and  taking  Richmond. 

McClellan  seemed  at  first  glance  equal  to  the  emer- 
gency. He  entered  upon  the  arduous  labors  of  recon- 
structing, indeed  of  creating,  an  army  with  the  prime 
requisite,  bodily  vigor.  A  muscular  frame,  deep-chested, 


332       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

broad-shouldered,  full-throated,  rendered  him  capable  of 
physical  exertions  so  long  sustained  that  they  aroused 
the  admiration  of  those  who  had  to  keep  up  with  him  in 
a  trying  round  of  duties.  His  bearing,  as  he  rode  about 
Washington  from  post  to  post,  was  alert  and  soldierly. 
Though  but  slightly  above  medium  height,  length  of  body 
made  him  look  tall  in  the  saddle,  while  a  good  seat  and  a 
steady  hand  completed  the  impression  of  superb  horse- 
manship. His  every  movement  betokened  dignity,  every 
command  perfect  self-reliance.  When  with  these  exter- 
nals are  recalled  the  well-set,  closely -cropped  head,  martial 
mustache,  bronzed  complexion,  aquiline  nose,  and  com- 
pelling blue  eyes,  we  comprehend  why  many  who  saw  him 
at  the  time  pronounced  him  to  be  the  beau-ideal  of  a  mili. 
tary  chieftain.  His  appearance,  it  may  be  said,  gave 
promise  of  more  than  his  talents  were  destined  to  fulfil, 
yet  McClellan's  powers  were  of  no  common  order.  A 
study  of  modern  warfare  in  all  its  aspects,  supplemented 
by  a  broad  general  scholarship,  had  admirably  prepared 
him  in  the  theory  of  military  organization.  Hardly  less 
notable  seemed  the  skill  with  which  this  knowledge  was 
now  employed.  Indeed,  McClellan's  tireless  energy,  mas- 
tery of  details,  comprehensive  discipline,  and  administra- 
tive grasp  of  what  was  needed  to  place  the  country  on 
a  war  footing  justified  more  nearly  than  in  any  other 
respects  a  comparison  to  the  great  Napoleon.  Immeasur- 
ably inferior,  withal,  to  the  Corsican  in  military  ability, 
as  we  shall  see,  the  American  surpassed  him  in  charac- 
ter. McClellan  was  a  man  of  good  impulses,  for  the  most 
part,  in  fact,  of  high  ideals.  The  romantic  —  more  pre- 
cisely speaking,  the  sentimental  —  view  of  life  appealed  to 
his  imagination.  He  plunged  into  a  duty,  as  he  saw  it, 
with  all  the  fervor  of  an  emotional  nature.  That  he  did 
not  always  see  clearly  at  critical  moments  must  be  con- 
ceded. Nevertheless,  his  integrity,  courage,  and  fidelity  to 
a  trust,  private  or  official,  were  in  the  main  as  deep-rooted 
as  the  religious  feeling  from  which  they  sprung.  A  man 


THE   YOUNG   NAPOLEON         333 

of  prayers,  like  so  many  who  have  led  in  the  world's 
bitterest  conflicts,  he  was,  to  a  remarkable  degree  for  a 
professional  soldier,  pure  in  thought  and  word  and  deed. 
Some  fellow  officer  might  fitly  have  applied  to  him,  with 
perhaps  a  slight  modification,  that  eulogy  addressed  by  a 
comrade,  full  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  before,  to  the 
first  illustrious  captain  on  Virginian  soil :  — 
"I  never  knew  a  warrior  yet,  but  tbee, 
From  wine,  tobacco,  debts,  dice,  oaths,  so  free." 

This  resemblance  to  John  Smith  may  be  traced  still 
further  in  McClellan's  charm  of  manner.  Richly  endowed 
with  the  social  virtues,  he  was  so  cordial,  frank,  and  sym- 
pathetic, so  courteous  in  demeanor,  so  buoyant  of  speech, 
that  men  were  insensibly  drawn  toward  him,  even  on  first 
acquaintance.  Not  a  few,  after  closer  intercourse,  came 
to  hold  him  in  affectionate  regard ;  while  the  favored 
ones  whom  he  admitted  to  his  friendship  repaid  it  with 
signal  love  and  loyalty.  This  power  to  inspire  devotion, 
this  personal  magnetism,  is  an  important,  if  not  an  essential 
element  of  successful  leadership.  Measured  according  to 
that  attribute  alone,  the  first  commander  of  the  Army  of 
the  Potomac  would  easily  have  ranked  as  its  greatest. 

But  McClellan  fell  short  of  heroic  proportions.  To 
what  extent,  the  campaigns  upon  which  he  eventually 
entered  all  too  clearly  disclosed.  In  fact,  before  opera- 
tions began,  certain  defects  of  temperament  that  con- 
tributed not  a  little  to  his  failures  showed  themselves 
through  the  pomp  and  circumstance  of  military  grandeur. 
The  pace,  as  is  usual  in  revolutionary  times,  was  rapid  — 
far  too  rapid  for  McClellan's  equipoise.  His  sudden  bound 
into  fame  had,  as  early  as  the  west  Virginian  days,  dis- 
turbed that  nicety  of  balance,  lacking  which,  no  man  can 
long  maintain  suitable  relations  with  the  rest  of  the  world. 
We  find  him,  then,  already  nursing  an  inordinate  respect 
for  his  own  importance,  that  grew  by  the  flattery  and  hero- 
worship  on  which  it  was  fed,  until  it  had  swelled,  at  the 
commencement  of  his  Washington  career,  to  a  condition 


334      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

bordering  upon  exaltation.  He  believed  himself  "  called  " 
to  a  sacred  mission.  No  "  man  of  destiny  "  ever  approached 
an  allotted  task  in  a  profounder  spirit  of  consecration.  To 
McClellan's  stimulated  imagination  it  seemed  as  if  Pro- 
vidence had  fashioned  him  throughout  his  earlier  life 
into  an  instrument  of  the  divine  will  for  the  preservation 
of  his  country;  and  this  notion  unfortunately  received 
apparent  confirmation  from  the  manner  of  his  reception 
at  the  Capital.  Our  Camillus  had  been  on  duty  there 
just  one  day,  when  he  wrote  to  his  wife  :  — 

"I  find  myself  in  a  new  and  strange  position  here  — 
President,  cabinet,  General  Scott,  and  all,  deferring  to  me. 
By  some  strange  operation  of  magic  I  seem  to  have  become 
the  power  of  the  land."  u 

Another  branch  of  the  government  paid  its  tribute, 
three  days  later,  to  the  rising  sun.  Visiting  the  Senate,  for 
the  purpose  of  urging  some  special  military  legislation, 
McClellan  "  was  quite  overwhelmed,"  as  he  expressed  it, 
at  his  treatment  by  the  members.  "  I  suppose,"  reads  a 
message  to  the  same  fair  correspondent,  "  half  a  dozen  of 
the  oldest  made  the  remark  I  am  becoming  so  much  used 
to,  '  Why,  how  young  you  look,  and  yet  an  old  soldier ! ' 
It  seems  to  strike  everybody  that  I  am  very  young.  They 
give  me  my  way  in  everything,  full  swing  and  unbounded 
confidence.  All  tell  me  that  I  am  held  responsible  for  the 
fate  of  the  nation,  and  that  all  its  resources  shall  be  placed 
at  my  disposal.  It  is  an  immense  task  that  I  have  on  my 
hands,  but  I  believe  I  can  accomplish  it.  ...  When  I 
was  in  the  Senate  chamber  to-day,  and  found  those  old 
men  flocking  around  me ;  when  I  afterwards  stood  in  the 
library,  looking  over  the  capitol  of  our  great  nation,  and 
saw  the  crowd  gathering  around  to  stare  at  me,  I  began 
to  feel  how  great  the  task  committed  to  me.  Oh !  how 
sincerely  I  pray  to  God  that  I  may  be  endowed  with  the 
wisdom  and  courage  necessary  to  accomplish  the  work. 
Who  would  have  thought,  when  we  were  married,  that  I 
should  so  soon  be  called  upon  to  save  my  country?  "  u 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         335 

These  are  but  specimens  of  the  ebullitions  in  which  the 
General's  earlier  private  letters  to  his  wife  abounded.  A 
dip,  at  random,  into  almost  any  of  them,  —  for  they  have, 
since  his  death,  been  rather  injudiciously  published, — 
reveals  at  once  the  egotism  of  the  writer,  and  the  well- 
nigh  unprecedented  good-will  lavished  upon  him  at  the 
start,  by  eminent  public  men.  What  wonder  if  the  new 
wine  of  their  adulation  mounted  to  McClellan's  head ! 
He  had  not  been  in  Washington  long  before  the  fixed 
idea  that  God  had  placed  him  there  to  save  his  country 
became  tinged  with  the  fatal  delusion  that  it  could  be 
saved  by  him  alone. 

Here  was  a  saviour  of  no  common  mold.  Beside  him 
all  those  other  tutelary  personages  who  surrounded  the 
President  seem  to  fade  into  insignificance.  McClellan's 
own  confidence  in  his  star,  to  say  nothing  of  the  popular 
belief  that  he  was  about  to  do  great  things,  had  been 
frankly  adopted  by  Mr.  Lincoln  himself.  He  petted  the 
General  in  his  simple,  abnegating  way,  and  did  his  best 
to  satisfy  that  officer's  innumerable  demands  upon  the 
government.  McClellan's  engaging  personality,  more- 
over, was  not  without  its  wonted  effect,  for  it  stirred  the 
great  heart  in  the  White  House  to  a  feeling  of  friendliness 
quite  apart  from  mere  official  support.  We  have  seen 
something  of  the  President's  amiable  indulgence  toward 
the  statesmen  who  severally  fancied  that  their  names 
spelled  the  country's  salvation ;  but  none  of  them,  it  is 
safe  to  say,  were  treated  with  such  consideration  as  was 
shown,  in  the  beginning,  at  least,  to  the  "  Young  Napo- 
leon." McClellan's  pretensions  met  with  the  utmost  good 
humor.  Flowers  and  invitations  to  dinner  and  kind  words 
poured  in  upon  him  from  the  Executive  Mansion,  until 
even  he,  a  very  glutton  for  honor,  turned  aside  to  cry, 
"  Enough  !  "  "  I  enclose,"  reads  one  of  those  private  let- 
ters to  his  wife,  "  a  card  just  received  from  '  A.  Lincoln '  ,* 
it  shows  too  much  deference  to  be  seen  outside."  13  This 
complaisance  hardly  raised  "  A.  Lincoln  "  in  the  eyes  of 


336      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

his  punctilious  subordinate.  To  McClellan's  straitened 
vision,  the  President  differed  but  little  from  the  country 
attorney,  who  had  made  entertainment  on  the  western 
circuit,  with  stories  that  "  were  seldom  refined."  The 
homely  manners,  unconventional  methods,  and  whimsical 
moods  which  misled,  as  we  have  seen,  so  many  politicians 
naturally  carried  this  soldier  of  aristocratic  tendencies, 
far  afield.  He  failed  more  grievously,  perhaps,  than  any 
of  them  to  comprehend  the  extraordinary  man  with  whom 
they  were  dealing.  The  nearest  that  he  could  bring  him- 
self to  expressing  anything  like  appreciation  was  contained 
in  a  patronizing  comment,  —  "  The  President  is  honest  and 
means  well."  M  He  might  have  said,  with  equal  grace, — 
"The  President  is  a  worthy  dunce."  For,  to  sum  it  all 
up,  conformably  with  McClellan's  academic  standards,  — 
and  he  knew  no  other,  —  Lincoln  seemed  to  fall  as  far 
below  the  requirements  of  the  situation  as  the  General 
fancied  himself  to  rise  above  them. 

An  officer  who  has  fallen  into  such  a  frame  of  mind 
will  not  submit  patiently  to  the  supervision  even  of  his 
commander-in-chief.  So  the  President's  natural  interest 
in  military  matters,  as  the  work  of  organization  went 
on,  greatly  annoyed  McClellan.  It  soon  began  to  look  as 
if  the  "  full  swing  and  unbounded  confidence,"  in  which 
he  had  exulted,  might  have  its  limitations  after  all.  He 
chafed  under  Mr.  Lincoln's  questions,  and  had  but  a  cold 
welcome  for  his  suggestions.  Nor  was  this  the  only  source 
of  irritation.  Day  by  day  the  General's  resentment  of 
what  he  called  "  meddling  "  took  a  wider  compass,  until 
finally,  not  the  Chief  Executive  alone,  but  the  Lieutenant- 
General,  most  of  the  cabinet  officers,  and  other  public 
men,  as  well,  appear  to  have  fallen  within  the  spreading 
circle  of  his  displeasure.  That  something  of  this  feeling 
should  find  expression  in  McClellan's  private  correspond- 
ence was  to  be  expected.  We  are  unprepared,  however, 
for  the  spleen  which  has  left  its  unseemly  tracks  among 
these  posthumous  revelations  of  the  man's  vanity. 


THE  YOUNG   NAPOLEON         337 

"  I  am  weary  of  all  this,"  reads  a  letter  to  his  wife, 
after  the  third  week  at  the  Capital.  "  I  have  no  ambition 
in  the  present  affairs ;  only  wish  to  save  my  country,  and 
find  the  incapables  around  me  will  not  permit  it."  15 

Who  these  incapables  were  may  be  inferred  from  other 
outbursts  that  followed.  The  first  splutter  of  McClellan's 
rage  was  directed,  in  part  at  least,  against  his  venerable 
patron  and  commander,  General  Scott,  concerning  whom 
the  younger  officer  confided  many  complaints  to  the  lady 
at  home.  Early  in  August  he  wrote :  — 

"  The  old  General  always  conies  in  the  way.  He  under- 
stands nothing,  appreciates  nothing." 

On  the  following  day  he  added,  in  the  same  strain :  — 

"  General  Scott  is  the  great  obstacle.  He  will  not 
comprehend  the  danger.  I  have  to  fight  my  way  against 
him." 

A  few  days  more  brought  an  ultimatum  in  sight :  — 

"  General  Scott  is  the  most  dangerous  antagonist  I 
have.  Our  ideas  are  so  widely  different  that  it  is  impos- 
sible for  us  to  work  together  much  longer." 

Then  there  was  something  very  like  a  panic,  with  honors 
for  the  responsibility  about  evenly  divided:  — 

"I  am  here  in  a  terrible  place.  The  enemy  have  from 
three  to  four  times  my  force.  The  President,  the  old  Gen- 
eral, cannot  or  will  not  see  the  true  state  of  affairs." 

And  so  on,  to  the  end  of  the  chapter,  when  Scott's  re- 
tirement made  way  for  the  last  coveted  promotion  of  his 
ambitious  junior. 

Painful  as  are  these  manifestations  of  McClellan's  acer- 
bity toward  an  illustrious  chief,  they  do  not  quite  move 
us  to  the  sense  of  outrage  with  which  we  come  upon  his 
privately  expressed  ill-will  —  at  times,  even  contempt  — 
for  Abraham  Lincoln  and  the  statesmen  by  whom  the 
President  was  supported. 

"  I  can't  tell  you,"  wrote  the  General  at  the  beginning 
of  October,  "  how  disgusted  I  am  becoming  with  these 
wretched  politicians."  18 


338       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF    MEN 

Yet  straightway  he  proceeded,  in  letter  after  letter, 
to  enlighten  his  sympathetic  correspondent  on  that  very 
subject.  A  few  extracts  must  suffice  here. 

"  This  getting  ready,"  reads  one  lament,  "  is  slow  work 
with  such  an  administi'ation.  I  wish  I  were  well  out  of  it." 

Then  makes  he  moan  after  the  following  fashion  :  — 

"I  am  becoming  daily  more  disgusted  with  this  ad- 
ministration —  perfectly  sick  of  it.  If  I  could  with  honor 
resign,  I  would  quit  the  whole  concern  to-morrow." 

He  does  not  quit,  however,  but  remains  for  martyr- 
dom:— 

"  I  was  obliged  to  attend  a  meeting  of  the  cabinet  at 
eight  P.  M.,  and  was  bored  and  annoyed.  There  are  some 
of  the  greatest  geese  in  the  cabinet  I  have  ever  seen  — 
enough  to  tax  the  patience  of  Job." 

Not  long  thereafter  he  strikes  a  harsher  note :  — 

"  I  have  a  set  of  men  to  deal  with  unscrupulous  and 
false.  .  .  .  The  people  think  me  all-powerful.  Never  was 
there  a  greater  mistake.  I  am  thwarted  and  deceived  by 
these  incapables  at  every  turn." 

Meanwhile,  like  an  alert  tactician,  McClcllan  countered 
with  a  little  thwarting  and  deceiving  of  his  own.  For  the 
same  letter  tells  how  he  concealed  himself  in  order  "  to 
dodge  all  enemies  in  shape  of  'browsing  '  Presidents, etc." 

This  happened  during  November,  by  which  time  his 
scorn  for  the  administration  knew  no  bounds.  "It  is 
sickening  in  the  extreme,"  he  wrote,  "  and  makes  me  feel 
heavy  at  heart,  when  I  see  the  weakness  and  un fitness  of 
the  poor  beings  who  control  the  destinies  of  this  great 
country." 

But  enough  of  such  vaporings,  for  the  present.  Happily, 
"  the  poor  beings  "  who  controlled  were  unaware  how  low 
they  stood  in  their  accomplished  critic's  private  books, 
though  he  furnished  the  prime  offender  with  grounds  for 
more  than  a  conjecture. 

Mr.  Lincoln  had  made  it  a  practice,  from  the  begin- 
ning, to  pay  informal  visits  at  McClellan's  headquarters. 


THE  YOUNG   NAPOLEON         339 

Waiving,  with  characteristic  self-surrender,  all  questions 
of  etiquette,  he  hoped  thus  to  keep  in  touch  with  military 
affairs  at  the  least  possible  expenditure  of  the  General's 
time.  Before  breakfast  or  after  supper,  as  the  case  might 
be,  the  President  would  arrive  with  some  such  greeting 
as,  "Is  George  in?"  And  it  became  a  matter  of  com- 
ment that,  if  George  was  in,  he  did  not  always  receive  his 
distinguished  caller  promptly.  Seemingly  unconscious  of 
any  discourtesy,  Mr.  Lincoln  waited  with  unruffled  good 
humor,  in  McClellan's  reception-room,  among  the  "  other 
common  mortals,"  as  one  indignant  chronicler  expressed 
it,  until  the  oracle  was  pleased  to  have  him  admitted.17 
More  vehement  still  must  have  been  the  rage  of  a  White 
House  clerk,  who  tells  how  he  accompanied  his  Chief, 
one  evening,  to  the  headquarters  in  H  Street.  "We  are 
seated,"  he  writes,  "  and  the  President's  arrival  has  been 
duly  announced,  but  time  is  being  given  him  to  think  over 
what  he  came  for.  General  McClellan  is  probably  very 
busy  over  some  important  detail  of  his  vast  duties,  and 
he  cannot  tear  himself  away  from  it  at  once.  A  minute 
passes,  and  then  another,  and  then  another,  and  with 
every  tick  of  the  clock  upon  the  mantel  your  blood  warms 
nearer  and  nearer  its  boiling-point.  Your  face  feels  hot 
and  your  fingers  tingle,  as  you  look  at  the  man,  sitting  so 
patiently  over  there,  whom  you  regard  as  the  Titan  and 
hero  of  the  hour ;  and  you  try  to  master  your  rebellious 
consciousness  that  he  is  kept  waiting,  like  an  applicant  in 
an  ante-room."  18  On  another  occasion,  Secretary  Seward 
had  the  honor  of  sharing  a  snub  with  the  President.  Call- 
ing together  at  headquarters,  one  evening,  they  were  told 
that  the  General  was  out,  but  would  soon  return.  After 
they  had  waited  in  the  reception-room  almost  an  hour, 
McClellan  came  back.  Disregarding  the  orderly  who  had 
told  him  about  his  visitors,  he  went  directly  upstairs. 
Whereupon  Mr.  Lincoln,  thinking  that  perhaps  he  had 
not  been  announced,  sent  up  his  name ;  but  the  messenger 
returned  with  the  information  that  the  General  had  gone 


340       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

to  bed.  It  is  doubtful  whether  the  President  ever  required 
or  received  an  explanation  of  this  gross  misbehavior.19 
There  was  no  appreciable  change  in  his  friendly  attitude 
toward  McClellan,  but  thenceforth  most  of  their  consulta- 
tions took  place  at  the  White  House.  What  happened 
concerning  an  appointment  for  one  of  these  meetings 
nicely  illustrates  how  Lincoln,  at  the  time,  regarded  his 
inflated  subordinate.  The  President  had  arranged  a  con- 
ference, to  be  held  in  the  Executive  Mansion,  between 
General  Ormsby  M.  Mitchel,  Governor  Dennison,  and 
General  McClellan.  All  but  the  last-named  gentleman 
kept  the  engagement.  After  Mitchel  and  Dennison  had, 
with  perhaps  some  show  of  irritation,  waited  a  long  time, 
Mr.  Lincoln  said :  — 

"  Never  mind ;  I  will  hold  McClellan's  horse,  if  he  will 
only  bring  us  success."  *° 

Meanwhile  the  President's  forbearance  was  subjected  to 
a  stilt  severer  strain.  As  time  advanced,  it  appeared  to  him, 
and  indeed  to  a  considerable  portion  of  the  loyal  North, 
that  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  lingered  longer  than  neces- 
sary in  the  camps  about  Washington.  This  splendid  force 
had  been  due  to  an  outpouring  of  men  and  means  lavish 
beyond  parallel.  With  unlimited  confidence  in  McClellan, 
the  people,  as  well  as  the  administration,  had  determined 
that  nothing  should  be  lacking  to  his  success.  By  com- 
mon consent,  moreover,  it  had  been  agreed  that  he  should 
not  be  hurried  ;  for  Bull  Run  had  sobered  the  nation,  and 
the  cry  of  "  On  to  Richmond  !  "  had,  temporarily  at  least, 
fallen  into  disfavor.  Relying  besides  upon  the  General's 
promise,  when  he  assumed  command,  that  the  war  should 
be  "short,  sharp,  and  decisive,"  the  public  watched  in 
patience,  through  the  late  summer  and  early  fall,  while 
the  army  took  shape  under  his  skilful  hands.  Organiza- 
tion was  then  the  order  of  the  day.  But  there  came  a 
time,  after  months  of  elaborate  preparations  and  imposing 
reviews,  when  the  country  began  to  grow  restless  again. 
On  all  sides  arose  demands  for  an  advance  of  the  army ; 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         341 

yet  comparatively  few  of  those  who  found  fault  with  its 
inaction  during  October  blamed  McClellan.  Professing 
himself  eager  to  open  the  campaign,  he  charged  his  delays 
now  to  the  government,  now  to  the  aged  General-in-Chief, 
until,  at  last,  one  of  these  alleged  obstacles  was  removed. 
Scott,  bending  beneath  the  weight  of  his  infirmities,  and 
smarting  under  the  junior  officer's  repeated  discourtesies, 
had,  in  August,  asked  to  be  retired.21  This  request  was 
finally  granted  on  the  1st  of  November,  but  not  before 
McClellan,  by  representing  that  the  Lieutenant-General 
stood  in  the  way  of  a  forward  movement,  had  secured 
the  intervention  of  Senators  Wade,  Chandler,  and  Trum- 
bull.  Their  belief  in  the  younger  General's  ardor  was 
then  still  shared  by  Mr.  Lincoln,  as  indeed  by  the  nation 
at  large.  So,  when  the  President  appointed  McClellan 
to  the  command  of  the  whole  army  in  Scott's  place,  his 
act  met  with  general  approval ; 22  yet  the  eager  patriots, 
who  looked  for  an  advance  as  soon  as  the  new  General- 
in-Chief  got  a  free  hand,  were  doomed  to  disappointment. 
Drills  and  parades  and  the  work  of  getting  ready  went 
on  as  before.  The  beautiful  autumn  weather  invited 
McClellan  into  Virginia,  without  response  ;  while  his  vast 
host  remained  coiled  around  the  Capital,  like  an  overfed 
serpent,  about  to  take  its  winter  sleep. 

Why  did  not  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  advance  ? 
Disciplined  and  equipped  by  perhaps  the  ablest  military 
organizer  on  American  soil,  it  excelled  the  force  con- 
fronting it  in  resources,  health,  and  efficiency.  So  formid- 
able an  array  had  never  before  been  seen  in  the  Western 
World.  With  fine  enthusiasm,  the  troops  chafed  while 
awaiting  the  order  to  march.  They  longed  to  break  camp 
for  the  enemy's  country,  and  their  many  weeks  of  labor 
on  a  formidable  chain  of  earthworks  had  gone  far  enough 
for  them  to  feel  that  they  would  leave  Washington  a  forti- 
fied city.  When  it  is  added  that  the  Federals  at  this  point 
outnumbered  the  Confederates  by  more  than  three  to  one, 
we  may  well  ask  the  reason  for  further  delay.  A  satisfao- 


342       LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

tory  explanation  must  be  sought  far  below  the  surface  of 
things,  —  in  the  purpose  and  disposition  of  the  General 
commanding.  His  aim,  as  he  expressed  it  at  the  very  out- 
set, was  to  carry  matters  "  en  grand  and  crush  the  rebels 
in  one  campaign."  If  this  might  be  accomplished  by  a 
single  decisive  battle,  so  much  the  more  to  his  liking.  For 
McClellan  evidently  aspired  to  the  strategic  triumphs  of 
a  Turenne,  rather  than  the  bloody  progress  of  a  Tamer- 
lane or  a  Bonaparte.  He  had  accordingly  set  about  the 
creation  of  an  army  which  should  be  so  overwhelmingly 
superior  to  that  of  the  enemy  as  to  demonstrate  "  the  utter 
impossibility  of  resistance."  ^  And  here  rose  the  rock 
upon  which  this  talented  officer  eventually  came  to  grief. 
A  weakness  for  overrating  his  antagonist's  strength  and 
for  underrating  his  own  rendered  him  incapable  of  making 
a  correct  comparison.  To  such  an  extent  was  this  carried 
that  he  persisted  in  demanding  more  men,  and  time  for 
further  preparations,  long  after  the  balance  tipped  heavily 
to  his  side.  There  was  still  room,  it  is  true,  for  improve- 
ment in  the  Army  of  the  Potomac, — as  of  what  army 
might  that  not  at  any  time  be  said?  —  but  war,  like  poli- 
tics, is  the  science  of  the  attainable,  and,  all  things  con- 
sidered, the  troops  were  ready  to  move  by  December. 

About  the  first  of  that  month  the  President  suggested 
an  advance  against  the  enemy  encamped  before  Washing- 
ton. A  memorandum,  which  he  handed  to  McClellan, 
asked  a  few  pertinent  questions  about  the  situation,  and 
outlined  a  plan  of  operations.  After  a  delay  of  perhaps 
ten  days,  this  paper  was  returned  to  Mr.  Lincoln  with 
brief  answers  inserted,  in  pencil ;  while  the  plan  was  dis- 
missed somewhat  after  the  same  curt  fashion.  "  Informa- 
tion recently,"  wrote  the  General,  "  leads  me  to  believe 
that  the  enemy  would  meet  us  in  front  with  equal  forces 
nearly —  and  I  have  now  my  mind  actually  turned  towards 
another  plan  of  campaign  that  I  do  not  think  at  all  an- 
ticipated by  the  enemy,  nor  by  many  of  our  own  people." 24 
The  information  referred  to  was  far  from  accurate.  It  is 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         343 

now  known  that  the  Confederates  along  the  Manassas  line 
numbered,  at  the  time,  about  47,000  effective  men,  whereas 
the  Federals,  according  to  McClellan's  own  showing,  had 
a  force  of  over  164,000  equipped  and  present  for  duty. 
Deducting  60,000  on  garrison  or  other  service,  as  he 
did,  still  left  104,000  with  which  to  meet  47,000.25  But 
the  General,  with  something  akin  to  infatuation,  declared 
himself  confronted  by  a  force  "not  less  than  150,000 
strong,  well  drilled  and  equipped,  ably  commanded,  and 
strongly  intrenched."28  To  make  headway  against  this 
fanciful  host,  he  had  insisted,  a  few  weeks  before,  that 
the  Army  of  the  Potomac  should  be  increased  to  an  effec- 
tive strength  of  208,000  men.27  McClellan's  tendency  to 
exaggerate  did  not  escape  Mr.  Lincoln,  who  tried  to  cor- 
rect it,  we  surmise,  in  his  characteristic  way.  They  were 
together  one  night  when  the  General  received  a  telegram 
from  an  officer  commanding  a  regiment  on  the  Upper 
Potomac.  The  despatch  described  in  magniloquent  lan- 
guage a  desperate  conflict  that  had  taken  place  during  the 
day,  and  closed  with  a  list  of  casualties  so  small  as  to  be 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  alleged  importance  of  the 
struggle.  "  The  President,"  relates  McClellan,  "  quietly 
listened  to  my  reading  of  the  telegram,  and  then  said  that 
it  reminded  him  of  a  notorious  liar,  who  attained  such  a 
reputation  as  an  exaggerator  that  he  finally  instructed  his 
servant  to  stop  him,  when  his  tongue  was  running  too 
rapidly,  by  pulling  his  coat  or  touching  his  feet.  One  day 
the  master  was  relating  wonders  he  had  seen  in  Europe, 
and  described  a  building  which  was  about  a  mile  long  and 
a  half  mile  high.  Just  then  the  servant's  heel  came  down 
on  the  narrator's  toes,  and  he  stopped  abruptly.  One 
of  the  listeners  asked  how  broad  this  remarkable  build- 
ing might  be.  The  narrator  modestly  replied,  '  About  a 
foot ! '  "  M  That  there  could  be  any  personal  application 
in  the  parable  apparently  never  entered  the  listener's 
mind ;  but  those  who  have  made  themselves  familiar  with 
Lincoln's  tactful  use  of  the  little  stories  which  this,  that, 


344       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

and  the  other  thing  reminded  him  of,  will  find  no  difficulty 
in  drawing  the  moral,  though  it  was  lost  upon  McClellan. 
He  stood  stoutly  by  his  inflated  estimates.  How  erroneous 
these  were,  the  President  had  no  means  of  demonstrating, 
nor  was  he  favored  with  a  hint  of  the  new  plan  for  which 
his  suggestion  had  been  so  unceremoniously  brushed  aside. 
He  waited  for  the  General  to  speak,  hoping  against  hope 
that  the  spell  of  inaction  which  brooded  over  the  army 
might  soon  be  broken.  Still  the  oracle  made  no  sign. 

A  fatal  irresolution  appears  to  have  possessed  McClel- 
lan. He  was  not  willing  to  take  the  field  until  his  ideal 
of  completeness  had  been  attained,  nor  could  he  bring 
himself  to  the  unpopular  course  of  going  into  winter  quar- 
ters. In  this  latter  respect  only,  the  General-in-Chief 
recognized  the  existence  of  an  aroused  public  opinion, 
which  he  would  have  done  well  to  take  carefully  into  ac- 
count. No  commander,  worthy  of  the  name,  opens  a  cam- 
paign, under  ordinary  conditions,  by  cutting  himself  off 
from  his  base  of  supplies ;  and,  in  a  free  country,  this 
base,  whatever  may  seem  to  be  its  place  on  the  theater  of 
operations,  really  lies  close  to  the  hearts  of  the  people. 
Without  their  continued  support,  the  general  cannot  hope 
to  succeed  ;  for,  sooner  or  later,  their  wishes  compel  atten- 
tion —  even  to  the  point,  at  times,  of  becoming  a  control- 
ling factor  in  his  calculations.  When  McClellan,  therefore, 
in  the  arrogance  of  military  pride,  refused  to  give  the 
popular  wilj  that  consideration  to  which  it  was  clearly 
entitled,  he  showed  himself  lacking,  as  has  well  been 
said,  "  in  those  statesmanlike  qualities  that  enter  into  the 
composition  of  a  great  general."  M  His  failure,  moreover, 
to  set  the  army  promptly  in  motion  foreshadowed  other 
deficiencies  not  less  serious. 

How  urgent  grew  the  need  of  military  action,  before  the 
close  of  1861,  may  be  seen  at  a  glance.  A  body  of  north- 
ern soldiers  —  the  largest  ever  collected  on  this  continent, 
was  seemingly  held  in  and  around  Washington  by  an 
inferior  southern  force,  which,  unmolested,  had  flaunted 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         345 

its  flag  for  months  in  sight  of  the  capitol ;  a  chance 
encounter  —  the  disastrous  battle  of  Ball's  Bluff  —  had 
confirmed  a  belief,  among  some,  in  the  superior  courage 
of  the  besiegers ;  railroad  communication  with  the  city, 
by  way  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad,  was  inter- 
rupted ;  and  Confederate  batteries,  on  the  Virginia  side 
of  the  Potomac,  effectually  closed  the  river  to  navigation. 
The  humiliation,  to  say  nothing  of  the  trouble,  produced 
by  this  condition  of  affairs,  was  none  the  less  keen  because 
McClellan,  after  repeatedly  emphasizing  the  necessity 
for  vigorous  operations,  continued  merely  to  mark  time. 
Within  ten  days  of  his  arrival  at  Washington,  he  had 
delivered  himself  of  a  "  memorandum  "  to  the  President, 
in  which  he  said  :  — 

"  Our  foreign  relations  and  financial  credit  also  impera- 
tively demand  that  the  military  action  of  the  government 
should  be  prompt  and  irresistible."  30 

No  wiser  words  had,  at  the  time,  been  uttered.  Never- 
theless, after  four  months  of  exhaustive  preliminaries,  his 
own  course  —  the  very  reverse  of  what  was  prompt  or 
irresistible  —  had  brought  both  those  important  interests 
into  jeopardy.  Europe  could  not  but  respect  a  secession 
movement  which  seemed  strong  enough  to  keep  the  Union 
Capital  so  long  in  a  state  of  partial  siege.  For  it  goes 
without  saying  that  such  prestige  as  could  be  extracted 
from  the  pitiful  spectacle  was  made  the  most  of  by  south- 
ern sympathizers  abroad,  and  the  Confederate  government 
at  home.  Every  day  of  inaction  on  the  Potomac  now 
favored  the  diplomatic  hopes  of  Jefferson  Davis,  as  it  aug- 
mented among  Abraham  Lincoln's  supporters  an  ever-pre- 
sent fear  of  foreign  intervention.31  Meanwhile  the  other 
danger  forecast  by  McClellan  also  made  itself  manifest. 
Actual  war  had  hardly  begun,  yet  the  treasury  was  nearly 
empty.  With  a  daily  expenditure  of  almost  $2,000,000 
and  a  steadily  increasing  public  debt  that  threatened  to 
reach  almost  fabulous  proportions,  the  government  could 
not  look  upon  this  apparent  torpor  in  the  Army  of  the 


346       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

Potomac  with  anything  but  the  gravest  anxiety.  Nor 
was  the  situation  improved  when  the  loyal  people  of  the 
North,  paying  war  taxes  as  freely  as  they  had  recruited 
regiments,  clamored  in  the  midst  of  their  sacrifices  for 
action.  From  all  sides  came  the  pressure  upon  the  admin- 
istration, and  McClellan  himself  was  now  no  longer 
spared.  His  hold  on  the  confidence  of  the  nation  became 
considerably  shaken.  Criticism  took  the  place  of  lauda- 
tion. Men,  recovering  from  their  excess  of  hero-worship, 
began  to  suspect  that  "our  chicken,"  in  the  language  of 
Lowell's  North  American  Review  essay,  "  was  no  eagle, 
after  all."  Even  the  daily  bulletin,  "  All  quiet  on  the 
Potomac,"  —  once  a  welcome  message  throughout  the 
land,  —  became  a  text  for  newspaper  satire  and  popular 
derision. 

Many  representatives  of  the  people,  when  they  reached 
Washington  in  December,  echoed  their  constituents'  de- 
mands for  a  more  spirited  prosecution  of  the  war.  This 
was  especially  so  among  the  Radical  members  of  the  House 
and  Senate,  who,  finding  bitter  fault  with  McClellan's 
tactics,  were  not  less  severe  upon  his  politics.  A  War 
Democrat  of  the  conservative  type,  he  hoped  to  see  the 
Union  restored  without  the  immediate  abolition  of  slavery. 
Although  his  attitude,  in  this  particular,  was  seemingly 
justified  by  Mr.  Lincoln's  Border  State  policy,  and  by 
the  declared  purpose  of  Congress  not  to  interfere  with 
the  established  institutions  of  the  southern  common- 
wealths,32 such  tenderness  as  he  manifested  for  the  rights 
of  slave-owners  was  exceedingly  offensive  to  the  most  in- 
fluential of  the  Republican  leaders.  Their  hostility  toward 
McClellan  became  intensified,  moreover,  by  the  fact  that 
unfriendly  critics  of  the  administration  appeared  to  be 
his  adherents,  while  even  outspoken  opponents  of  the  war 
championed  his  cause.  Only  your  true  Napoleon  could, 
by  force  of  great  military  triumphs,  come  unharmed  out 
of  such  a  coil ;  but  this  unfortunate  general,  lingering 
too  long  in  the  shadow  of  the  capitol,  had  become  in- 


THE   YOUNG   NAPOLEON         347 

volved,  as  we  shall  see,  beyond  relief.  Idolized  at  the 
outset  by  Union  men  of  all  parties,  he  found  himself  pre- 
sently the  storm  center  about  which  beat  the  fiercest 
currents  of  contending  political  factions. 

Over  McClellan,  thus  beset,  the  President  held  the 
segis  of  his  protection.  This  smart  young  General  had, 
it  is  true,  been  at  no  pains  to  conceal  an  overweening 
contempt  for  Mr.  Lincoln  or  his  civilian  advisers ;  and 
whatever  victories  he  might  win  would  assuredly  be 
turned  into  political  capital  by  the  administration's  Demo- 
cratic opponents,  who  were  already  getting  into  a  position 
to  appropriate  his  laurels.  That  he  could,  moreover,  be 
continued  in  command  only  at  the  risk  of  alienating 
from  the  government  some  of  its  own  party  chiefs  —  to 
say  nothing  of  a  patriotic  populace,  press,  and  platform, 
clamoring  against  a  so-called  Fabian  policy  —  greatly 
troubled  the  President.  Yet  loyalty,  in  the  last  extreme, 
to  the  men  about  him  was  one  of  Lincoln's  dominant 
traits  ;  and  to  support  the  "  Young  Napoleon,"  early  in 
the  winter  of  1861-62,  was  loyalty  to  the  country,  as  well. 
For  the  President,  frankly  conceding  his  own  ignorance 
of  military  affairs,  knew  of  no  one  who  was  likely  to 
wield  the  formidable  weapon  which  McClellan  had  fash- 
ioned, more  effectually  than  the  General-in-Chief  himself. 
To  sustain  that  officer  in  public,  and  to  defend  him  in 
private  against  the  aspersions  of  his  powerful  critics, 
became  at  this  time  not  the  least  of  Lincoln's  cares. 
When  ardent  friends  of  the  administration  insisted  upon 
the  necessity  for  immediate  action,  he  replied  that  Mc- 
Clellan was  right  not  to  advance  before  his  preparations 
were  completed.  The  faultfinding  even  took  the  shape 
of  protests  by  special  committees.  One  of  these  dele- 
gations consisted  of  three  influential  Representatives, 
Sehuyler  Colfax,  Reuben  E.  Fenton,  and  Galusha  A. 
Grow,  Speaker  of  the  House.  They  came  to  point  out  the 
importance  not  only  of  appeasing  popular  discontent  with 
the  lagging  army,  but  also  of  averting  a  heated  discussion 


348       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

about  its  commander,  which  threatened  daily  to  break  out 
on  the  floor  of  Congress.  What  they  had  to  say  was 
hardly  news  to  the  President.  Yet  he  received  them  in 
the  jocular  mood  behind  which  so  often  lay  hidden  the 
anxiety  that  gnawed  at  his  heart.  It  seemed  to  him,  he 
said,  as  if  Providence,  with  favoring  sky  and  earth,  beck- 
oned the  army  on;  but  that  General  McClellan,  who 
knew  his  business,  no  doubt  had  his  reasons  for  disre- 
garding these  hints.  "  As  we  have  got  to  stand  by  the 
General,"  continued  Mr.  Lincoln,  "  I  think  a  good  way 
to  do  it  may  be  for  Congress  to  take  a  recess  for  several 
weeks,  and  by  the  time  you  get  together  again,  if  McClel- 
lan is  not  off  with  the  army,  Providence  is  very  likely  to 
step  in  with  hard  roads  and  force  us  to  say,  '  the  army 
can't  move.'  You  know  Dickens  said  of  a  certain  man 
that  if  he  would  always  follow  his  nose  he  would  never 
stick  fast  in  the  mud.  Well,  when  the  rains  set  in,  it  will 
be  impossible  for  even  our  eager  and  gallant  soldiers  to 
keep  their  noses  so  high  that  their  feet  will  not  stick  in 
the  clay  mud  of  old  Virginia."33  To  the  General  himself, 
the  President  used  a  very  different  tone.  He  sought,  at 
every  opportunity,  to  impress  privately  upon  that  officer 
how  serious  the  situation  had  become,  and  how  vital  to 
the  cause  which  they  both  held  dear  was  the  striking  of 
a  decisive  blow. 

Military  affairs  were  in  this  unsatisfactory  state  at 
Christmas  time,  when  McClellan  took  to  his  bed,  for  what 
proved  to  be  a  period  of  three  weeks,  with  an  attack  of 
typhoid  fever.  As  he  had  not  conferred  adequate  authority 
upon  any  one  to  act  for  him  meanwhile,  "  his  absence," 
to  quote  a  far  from  unfriendly  member  of  the  general 
staff,  "paralyzed  work  at  headquarters."34  The  outlook 
for  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  was  consequently  as  gloomy 
as  ever  when  Congress  reassembled  after  the  holiday 
recess.  Members  no  longer  restrained  themselves  from 
demanding  explanations  ;  the  Joint  Committee  appointed 
to  inquire  into  the  conduct  of  the  war  K  held  daily  ses- 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         349 

sions,  at  which  one  military  expert  after  another  testified 
to  the  readiness  of  the  troops  for  a  campaign ;  and  pro- 
tests against  their  continued  idleness  focused  upon  the 
President,  from  every  conceivable  direction,  with  a  heat 
that  became  almost  intolerable.  Matters  had  evidently 
reached  a  crisis.  Having  failed  in  several  attempts  to 
consult  with  the  sick  man,  Mr.  Lincoln,  on  January  10, 
summoned  two  division  commanders,  Generals  Irvin  Mc- 
Dowell and  William  B.  Franklin.  To  them  the  harassed 
chief  unburdened  himself.  "  The  President,"  as  McDowell 
relates,  "  said  he  was  in  great  distress,  and,  as  he  had 
been  to  General  McClellan's  house,  and  the  General  did 
not  ask  to  see  him,  and  as  he  must  talk  to  somebody,  he 
had  sent  for  General  Franklin  and  myself,  to  obtain  our 
opinion  as  to  the  possibility  of  soon  commencing  active 
operations  with  the  Army  of  the  Potomac.  To  use  his  own 
expression,  if  something  was  not  soon  done,  the  bottom 
would  be  out  of  the  whole  affair ;  and,  if  General  Mc- 
Clellan  did  not  want  to  use  the  army,  he  would  like  to 
'  borrow  it,'  provided  he  could  see  how  it  could  be  made 
to  do  something."  ^  Then  followed  a  series  of  conferences 
with  Mr.  Lincoln,  in  which,  at  one  time  or  another,  Sec- 
retaries Sevvard  and  Chase,  Postmaster-General  Blair, 
Assistant  Secretary  of  War  Scott,37  Quartermaster-Gen- 
eral Meigs,  and  the  two  officers  mentioned,  took  part. 
Their  advice — excepting  that  of  Judge  Blair,  McClellan's 
stanch  supporter  —  was  in  favor  of  moving,  within  a  short 
time,  as  the  President  had  suggested  six  weeks  before, 
upon  the  enemy's  position  at  Centreville  and  Manassas.38 
Deliberations  had  progressed  thus  far  when  rumors  of 
what  was  going  on  reached  the  General-in-Chief.  His 
friend,  Edwin  M.  Stanton,  then  about  to  be  made  Secre- 
tary of  War,  brought  the  first  hint,  in  characteristically 
acrid  language.  "  They  are  counting,"  said  he,  "  on  your 
death,  and  are  already  dividing  among  themselves  your 
military  goods  and  chattels."  ^  No  tonic  on  the  invalid's 
table  could  have  done  so  much  to  hasten  his  convalescence. 


350      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

Mustering  his  returning  strength,  he  had  himself  driven, 
on  Sunday  morning,40  to  the  White  House,  where  the 
President,  receiving  him  kindly,  invited  him  to  attend  one 
of  the  conferences,  which  was  to  be  held  on  the  following 
day.  At  the  appointed  time,  McClellan  met  the  cabinet 
officers  and  military  men,  already  spoken  of,  in  Mr.  Lin- 
coln's office.  The  situation  was,  to  say  the  least,  embar- 
rassing, especially  for  the  President.  He  wished  to  pre- 
serve cordial  relations  among  these  men ;  but  he  wished, 
still  more,  to  carry  out  the  program  on  which  most  of 
them  had  virtually  agreed.  At  his  request,  General  Mc- 
Dowell explained  the  plan  under  consideration,  concluding 
what  he  had  to  say  with  somewhat  of  an  apology  for  tke 
peculiar  position  in  which  McClellan's  critical  illness  and 
the  President's  orders  had  placed  the  three  subordinate 
officers  present.  To  this  the  General-in-Chief  curtly  re- 
plied, "  You  are  entitled  to  have  any  opinion  you  please," 
adding,  with  evident  resentment,  that,  as  he  was  again 
restored  to  health,  further  investigations  or  explanations 
were  unnecessary.  Here  Mr.  Lincoln  interposed  to  ask 
what  was  to  be  done  and  when.  McClellan  rejoined  that 
"  the  case  was  so  clear  a  blind  man  could  see  it."  Yet  he 
straightway  proceeded  to  raise  difficulties,  in  a  way  that 
left  most,  if  not  all,  of  those  present  less  enlightened  than 
that  hypothetical  person  of  impaired  vision.  At  last,  Mr. 
Chase  —  once  McClellan's  friend  and  sponsor,  now  his 
declared  opponent 41  —  repeated,  with  manifest  impatience, 
the  President's  question.  To  which  the  General-in-Chief 
promptly  replied  that  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  had 
no  right  to  interrogate  him  about  military  affairs.  Turn- 
ing to  Mr.  Lincoln,  he  protested,  on  grounds  of  secrecy, 
against  developing  his  plans  before  such  advisers;  and 
declared  that  he  would  do  so  only  in  obedience  to  a  writ- 
ten order,  and  on  the  President's  responsibility.  It  was 
obviously  high  time  to  terminate  this  discussion,  which 
appeared  to  be  drifting  into  a  dangerous  channel.  So 
Mr.  Lincoln  asked  McClellan  whether  he  had  fixed  upon 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         351 

a  date,  in  his  own  mind,  for  commencing  operations.  The 
General  answered,  "  Yes."  "  Then,"  said  the  President, 
"  I  will  adjourn  this  meeting."  42 

In  averting  a  disclosure  of  his  plans  to  a  mixed  council 
of  civilians  and  soldiers,  McClellan  conformed  to  time- 
honored  military  traditions.  Absolute  secrecy  is  the  car- 
dinal rule  of  strategy.  It  received  pithy  expression  from 
the  Great  Frederick,  when  he  said  that  if  his  night-cap 
knew  what  was  in  his  head,  he  would  throw  it  into  the  fire  ; 
and  President  Lincoln,  trying  to  put  down  a  civil  war 
from  a  Capital  infested  with  spies,  had  not  been  slow  to 
recognize  the  truth  of  the  principle.  In  fact,  just  a  week 
before  the  meeting  here  described,  he  had,  at  a  conference 
with  his  cabinet  and  the  Committee  on  the  Conduct  of  the 
War,  surprised  the  latter  gentlemen,  not  only  by  admit- 
ting that  the  administration  was  ignorant  of  McClellan's 
plans,  but  still  more,  by  approving  of  the  General's  reti- 
cence. It  was  to  a  sympathetic  judgment,  therefore,  that 
our  officer  had  addressed  his  plea  against  divulging  mili- 
tary secrets.  The  President,  as  we  have  seen,  yielded 
gracefully.  Restoring  McClellan  to  the  saddle,  he  ad- 
journed, without  date,  the  meeting  from  which  so  much 
had  been  expected.  Yet  this  was  done,  be  it  said,  not 
without  a  feeling  that  his  own  wishes  had  again  been 
thwarted  ;  and  that  the  General-in-Chief,  now  more  than 
ever,  stood  obligated  to  lose  not  a  day  in  getting  the  army 
under  way. 

Here  closed  what  may  be  called  the  first  phase  in  the 
relations  between  President  Lincoln  and  General  Mc- 
Clellan. That  the  pretensions  of  this  accomplished  but 
autocratic  soldier  had  been  suffered  to  go  month  after 
month  unchecked  was  owing,  of  course,  to  unique  con- 
ditions. If  during  that  period  "  the  Chief  Magistrate,"  as 
one  caustic  pamphleteer  expressed  it,  "  went  into  voluntary 
or  involuntary  eclipse  "  so  far  as  directing  the  movements 
of  the  army  was  concerned,  he  did  what  any  prudent 
leader  without  military  training  would  have  done.  Yet  so 


352      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

heavy  were  the  drafts  made  on  Lincoln's  forbearance, 
that  his  almost  unbounded  patience  had,  by  this  time, 
nearly  reached  the  vanishing  point.  Indeed,  an  incident 
which  happened  within  a  week  after  McClellan's  trium- 
phant dispersal  of  the  President's  little  council  affords  a 
glimpse  once  more  of  the  master  whose  strong  band  curbed 
Seward,  Chase,  and  Stanton. 

Early  in  the  winter  of  1861-62,  Washington  had  been 
visited  by  the  tuneful  Hutchinson  family.  Their  concerts 
of  ballads  and  patriotic  songs  had  drawn  enthusiastic 
audiences.  After  singing  at  one  of  the  White  House 
receptions,  greatly  to  the  enjoyment  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  they 
had  applied  to  the  Secretary  of  War  for  permission  to 
entertain  the  soldiers  in  the  camps  across  the  Potomac. 
A  pass  was  readily  secured  from  Mr.  Cameron,43  through 
the  good  offices  of  Secretary  Chase,  between  whom  and 
the  Hutchinsons  existed  the  strong  bond  of  anti-slavery 
opinions.  As  it  happened,  the  singers  did  not  journey 
far.  Their  first  concert  was  given  before  two  New  Jersey 
regiments  of  General  Franklin's  division,  in  the  spacious 
chapel  connected  with  Fairfax  Seminary,  near  Alexan- 
dria. Number  after  number  was  applauded  by  the  sol- 
diers, until  the  vocalists  began  John  G.  Whittier's  hymn 
of  liberty,  "  Ein  Feste  Burg  1st  Unser  Gott."  They  had 
finished  the  third  verse,  — 

"  What  gives  the  wheat  fields  blades  of  steel  ? 

What  points  the  rebel  cannon  ? 
What  sets  the  roaring  rabble's  heel 
On  the  old  star-spangled  pennon  ? 
What  breaks  the  oath 
Of  the  men  o'  the  South  ? 
What  whets  the  knife 
For  the  Union's  life  ?  — 
Hark  to  the  answer :  Slavery  !  " 

when  a  hiss  was  heard  from  a  corner  of  the  church.  Sur- 
geon Lewis  W.  Oakley  had  taken  this  method  of  showing 
his  contempt  for  abolition  doctrine.  The  gage  was  picked 
up  by  Major  David  Hatfield.  Rising  in  a  front  pew,  he 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         353 

angrily  threatened  to  have  any  one  ejected  who  should  re- 
peat the  interruption.  A  brief  altercation  ensued,  amidst 
cheers,  hisses,  and  much  confusion.  Order  was  at  last 
restored,  but  the  song-  was  not  finished.  On  the  follow- 
ing morning,  General  Kearney,  in  command  at  Fairfax, 
prohibited  the  next  concert,  for  which  preparations  were 
making ;  and  a  copy  of  the  obnoxious  hymn  was  forwarded 
to  Franklin's  headquarters,  whence  the  matter  finally 
reached  General  McClellan.  He  promptly  disposed  of  it 
by  revoking  the  pass,  as  well  as  the  permit  to  sing  for  the 
troops.  Returning  to  Washington,  the  Hutchinsons  laid 
their  grievance  before  a  sympathetic  listener  in  the  per- 
son of  their  friend,  Secretary  Chase.  He  carried  into  the 
next  cabinet  meeting  a  copy  of  the  alleged  "  incendiary  " 
verses ;  and,  what  was  of  greater  moment,  entered  a  pro- 
test against  the  action  of  McClellan  in  annulling  a  permit 
issued  by  his  superior,  Secretary  Cameron.44  On  hearing 
the  words  read,  Mr.  Lincoln  warmly  approved  of  the 
hymn.  It  was,  he  remarked,  just  the  kind  of  a  song  for 
the  soldiers  to  hear ;  and,  as  far  as  canceled  passes  were 
concerned,  the  Hutchinsons  should  have  the  right  to  go 
among  any  of  the  troops  whose  commanders  invited  them 
to  sing.  Our  melodious  friends  retraced  their  steps,  forth- 
with, to  Alexandria,  where  they  gave  two  concerts  — 
interdicted  song  and  all  —  before  delighted  audiences  of 
soldiers.45 

Throughout  the  North,  meanwhile,  this  interlude  had 
created  much  excitement.  Factional  feeling  ran  high.  In- 
censed as  the  Radicals  were,  they  found  not  a  little  com- 
fort in  the  fact  that  the  President  had  brought  himself, 
at  last,  directly  to  reverse  an  order  of  the  General-in- 
Chief  ;  while  McClellan's  admirers  gloried  in  his  recent 
recovery  of  the  command,  and  insisted  that  he  should  not 
be  hampered  by  civilian  interference.  Standing  between 
these  two  forces,  Lincoln  now  opposed  his  masterful  will 
to  both.  He  declined  to  remove  McClellan,  as  one  faction 
demanded,  or  to  leave  him  in  absolute  military  control,  as 


354       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

was  urged  by  the  other.  The  President  had,  in  fact,  been 
preparing  himself  to  take  that  control  into  his  own  hands. 
For  weeks  he  had  devoted  every  available  moment  to  a 
study  of  strategy.  Text-books,  reports,  plans,  and  maps, 
over  which  he  pored,  at  times,  late  into  the  night,  as  well 
as  numerous  consultations  with  commanders  in  active  ser- 
vice, had  gone  far  toward  removing  the  feeling  of  help- 
lessness with  which  he  originally  approached  military 
matters.  Consequently,  when  the  General-in-Chief  came, 
near  the  close  of  January,  with  his  project  for  a  campaign 
against  Richmond  by  way  of  Chesapeake  Bay,  the  Presi- 
dent received  him  in  a  new  role.  Disapproving  of  this 
route,  which  involved  prolonged  preparation,  he  deter* 
mined  to  put  forward  his  own  plan  again,  not,  however, 
as  before,  in  the  form  of  a  suggestion,  but  of  a  positive 
command. 

On  the  27th  of  January,  Mr.  Lincoln,  without  consult- 
ing the  General-in-Chief,  or  his  cabinet  advisers,  to  whom 
he  merely  read  the  document  for  their  information,  issued 
the  "  President's  General  War  Order  No.  1."  In  this  he 
directed  "  that  the  22d  day  of  February,  1862,  be  the  day 
for  a  general  movement  of  the  land  and  naval  forces  of 
the  United  States  against  the  insurgent  forces."  Specify- 
ing, moreover,  which  troops  were  chiefly  meant,  —  the  list 
of  course  included  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  —  he  an- 
nounced "  that  the  heads  of  departments,  and  especially 
the  Secretaries  of  War  and  of  the  Navy,  with  all  their 
suboi-dinates,  and  the  General-in-Chief,  with  all  other  com- 
manders and  subordinates  of  land  and  naval  forces,  will 
severally  be  held  to  their  strict  and  full  responsibilities 
for  prompt  execution  of  this  order."  ^  Having  by  virtue 
of  his  constitutional  authority  thus  assumed  the  active 
direction  of  military  operations,  Mr.  Lincoln,  four  days 
later,  issued  the  "President's  Special  War  Order  No.  1." 
This  commanded  "  that  all  the  disposable  force  of  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac,  after  providing  safely  for  the  de- 
fence of  Washington,  be  formed  into  an  expedition  for  the 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         355 

immediate  object  of  seizing  and  occupying  a  point  upon 
the  railroad  southwestward  of  what  is  known  as  Manassas 
Junction,  all  details  to  be  in  the  discretion  of  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief,  and  the  expedition  to  move  before  or  on 
the  22d  day  of  February  next."  "  McClellan  protested. 
He  asked  permission  to  submit  in  writing  his  objections 
to  the  overland  route,  and  his  reasons  for  preferring  to 
advance  by  way  of  the  Chesapeake.  These  arguments 
had  doubtless  already  been  considered  in  the  course  of  his 
recent  discussions  with  the  President,  yet  Mr.  Lincoln 
gave  the  desired  consent.  He  even  furnished  McClellan 
with  a  basis  for  his  memorandum,  in  the  following  note : 

EXECUTIVE  MANSION,  WASHINGTON, 
February  3,  1862. 

MAJOR-GENERAL  MCCLELLAN, 

My  dear  Sir :  —  You  and  I  have  distinct  and  different 
plans  for  a  movement  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  — 
yours  to  be  down  the  Chesapeake,  up  the  Rappahannock 
to  Urbana,  and  across  land  to  the  terminus  of  the  rail- 
road on  the  York  River;  mine  to  move  directly  to  a 
point  on  the  railroad  southwest  of  Manassas. 

If  you  will  give  me  satisfactory  answers  to  the  follow- 
ing questions,  I  shall  gladly  yield  my  plan  to  yours. 

First,  Does  not  your  plan  involve  a  greatly  larger 
expenditure  of  time  and  money  than  mine  ? 

Second,  Wherein  is  a  victory  more  certain  by  your  plan 
than  mine? 

Third,  Wherein  is  a  victory  more  valuable  by  your 
plan  than  mine  ? 

Fourth,  In  fact,  would  it  not  be  less  valuable  in  this, 
that  it  would  break  no  groat  line  of  the  enemy's  com- 
munications, while  mine  would  ? 

Fifth,  In  case  of  disaster,  would  not  a  retreat  be  more 
difficult  by  your  plan  than  mine  ? 

Yours  truly, 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.*" 


356       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

These  questions  were  never  directly  answered.  What 
might  be  regarded  as  McClellan's  replies  to  them  were 
embodied  in  an  elaborate  statement  of  his  views,  ad- 
dressed, on  the  same  day,  not  to  the  President,  but  to  the 
Secretary  of  War.  Opening  this  paper  with  a  defence 
of  his  course  in  not  advancing  until  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac  was  fully  prepared  for  action,  the  General-in- 
Chief  proceeded  to  give  both  plans  of  campaign  detailed 
consideration.  He  opposed  the  attack  upon  Manassas  in 
a  series  of  ingenious  objections,  which  were  based  prima- 
rily—  as  transpired  too  late  —  on  a  gross  exaggeration  of 
the  enemy's  strength.  He  advocated,  with  equal  earnest- 
ness, the  adoption  of  the  Chesapeake  route,  by  way  pre- 
ferably of  Urbana.  Should  that  fail  him,  however,  as  a 
landing  point,  Mob  Jack  Bay  was  suggested,  or  —  "  the 
worst  coming  to  the  worst"  —  Fortress  Monroe.  And 
these  considerations  brought  the  General  to  a  significant 
summing  up.  "  It  is  by  no  means  certain,"  he  wrote, 
"  that  we  can  beat  them  at  Manassas.  On  the  other  line, 
I  regard  success  as  certain,  by  all  the  chances  of  war."  * 
There  was  nothing  equivocal  about  such  language,  and 
the  writer  flattered  himself  that  it  should  have  carried 
conviction.50  "  This  letter,"  he  said  later,  "  must  have 
produced  some  effect  upon  the  mind  of  the  President, 
since  the  execution  of  his  order  was  not  required,  although 
it  was  not  revoked  as  formally  as  it  had  been  issued." 51 

True,  the  letter  had  "  produced  some  effect "  on  Lin- 
coln's mind,  but  hardly  in  the  way  implied  by  McClel- 
lan's contemptuous  phrase.  The  President's  confidence 
in  the  merits  of  his  own  plan  remained  unshaken.  For 
political,  no  less  than  for  military  reasons,  an  immediate 
attack  upon  the  enemy  before  Washington,  by  a  column 
which  should  protect  the  Union  Capital  while  advanc- 
ing upon  Richmond,  appeared  wiser  to  him  than  a  flank 
movement  that,  uncovering  Washington  for  a  shorter 
march  to  the  Confederate  Capital,  would  still  consume,  m 
transportation  down  the  Chesapeake,  much  more  time  and 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         357 

money.  Experts,  reviewing  McClellan's  plan  since  the 
war,  along  purely  strategical  lines,  have  differed  widely 
in  their  opinions  of  its  soundness.  The  President's  plan, 
on  the  other  hand,  as  more  nearly  meeting  the  require- 
ments of  the  situation,  had  the  approval,  at  the  time,  of 
some  able  soldiers,  and  of  well-nigh  all  the  civilians  whom 
he  consulted.  Mr.  Stanton,  the  new  Secretary  of  War, 
was  especially  earnest  in  its  support ;  and  he  urged  Mr. 
Lincoln,  as  has  been  related,  to  insist  upon  having  his  way. 
Here  is  where  the  "  effect,"  produced  on  the  President's 
mind  by  McClellan's  views,  came  into  play.  Though  the 
General-in-Chief  had  failed  to  prove  that  the  Chesapeake 
route  was  the  better  of  the  two,  he  had  committed  him- 
self, in  his  letter,  so  unreservedly  against  the  overland 
plan,  as  to  put  all  thought  of  forcing  it  upon  him  out  of 
the  question.  Lincoln's  abundant  common  sense,  to  say 
nothing  of  his  recent  military  studies,  saved  him  from 
the  blunder  of  ordering  a  commander  upon  a  campaign 
in  which  that  officer  placed  no  confidence.  The  Chief 
Magistrate  had,  it  is  true,  taken  the  reins  into  his  own 
hands;  yet  he  knew  with  unerring  precision  —  as  we  have 
repeatedly  seen  —  when  to  tighten  and  when  to  slacken 
his  hold.  So,  despite  the  vigorous  remonstrance  of  the 
Committee  on  the  Conduct  of  the  War,  Secretary  Stan- 
ton,  and  many  other  influential  men,  preparations  were 
begun  for  transporting  the  army  down  the  Chesapeake. 

The  President  directed,  however,  that  the  troops  should 
not  leave  Washington  for  this  distant  field,  until  the 
Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad  had  been  reopened,  and 
the  enemy's  batteries  on  the  Potomac  destroyed.  Here 
arose  another  source  of  disagreement  between  Lincoln 
and  McClellan.  According  to  the  General's  theory,  these 
positions  would  necessarily  be  abandoned  by  the  Confed- 
erates, as  soon  as  his  prospective  operations  on  the  Lower 
Chesapeake  should  be  developed ;  but  that  this  would  in- 
evitably be  the  result,  he  failed  —  no  less  than  in  the  case 
of  the  project  itself  —  to  convince  the  President  or  his 


358       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

advisers.  "  They  had,"  wrote  McClellan  scornfully,  some 
years  later,  "  neither  the  courage  nor  the  military  insight 
to  understand  the  effect  of  the  plan." 52  Yielding,  never- 
theless, to  Mr.  Lincoln's  decided  opinions,  he  reluctantly 
prepared  to  carry  out  the  President's  wishes  in  these  two 
particulars.  As  the  railroad  was  interrupted  near  Har- 
per's Ferry,  McClellan  determined  to  cross  the  Upper 
Potomac  at  that  point,  in  force,  by  means  of  a  permanent 
bridge  to  be  constructed  of  canal-boats,  cover  the  rebuild- 
ing of  the  railroad-bridge,  and  push  on  to  Winchester, 
where  he  expected  to  fight  a  battle.  Meanwhile,  the  Con- 
federate batteries  on  the  Lower  Potomac  were  to  be 
stormed  by  a  division  under  General  Hooker.  So  san- 
guine was  McClellan  of  the  result  that  he  assured  Mr. 
Lincoln,  before  leaving  Washington,  of  a  brilliant  and 
successful  dash.  Every  contingency  had  seemingly  been 
provided  for.  "  If  this  move  fails,"  he  said,  "  I  will  have 
nobody  to  blame  but  myself." 53  In  fact,  there  is  reason 
to  believe  that,  all  his  theories  to  the  contrary  notwith- 
standing, the  General-in-Chief  thought,  at  the  time,  of 
turning  these  simple  operations  into  what  the  President 
had  wanted  —  a  decisive  overland  campaign.54 

About  Washington's  birthday,  —  the  date  set  by  Mr. 
Lincoln,  —  an  advance  may  be  said  to  have  been  in  pro- 
gress. A  strong  force,  collected  near  Harper's  Ferry,  held 
itself  ready  to  move.  The  oanal-boats  lay  in  the  Chesa- 
peake and  Ohio  Canal,  whence  they  were  to  be  floated 
into  the  Potomac.  Everything  looked  favorable  for  the 
immediate  construction  of  a  stout  bridge  and  the  rapid 
passage  of  a  powerful  army  into  Virginia.  McClellan  him- 
self hastened  to  the  spot.  A  considerable  portion  of  his 
troops  were  under  orders  to  follow.  On  February  26,  he 
despatched  back  to  the  War  Department  an  enthusiastic 
message.  On  the  27th,  all  was  gloom  and  disappointment. 
When  the  canal-boats  had,  that  morning,  reached  the  lift- 
lock  through  which  alone  they  could  pass  into  the  river, 
they  were  found  to  be  too  wide  by  several  inches.55  With 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         359 

this  discovery,  celerity  of  movement  —  the  essential  fac- 
tor in  the  affair  —  became  impossible.  The  expedition, 
as  planned,  was  at  once  abandoned.  McClellan  coun- 
termanded his  order  for  an  advance  from  the  Capital, 
and  revoked,  at  the  same  time,  Hooker's  instructions  to 
attack  the  batteries.56  After  taking  measures  to  cover  the 
restoration  of  the  railroad,  the  General-in-Chief  returned 
to  Washington.  Another  brilliant  project  had  come  to 
naught,  in  rather  a  ridiculous  manner.  As  some  wag,  at 
the  time,  remarked,  it  "  died  of  lockjaw." 

The  fiasco  at  Harper's  Ferry  increased  the  number  and 
bitterness  of  McClellan's  opponents.  In  their  denuncia- 
tions to  the  President,  they  accused  him,  all  told,  of  every 
fault  that  may  be  charged  against  an  unsuccessful  general, 
not  stopping  short  of  even  the  most  heinous  —  treason  to 
his  cause.  What  impression,  if  any,  such  wild  talk  made 
upon  Lincoln  cannot  now  be  known.  Without  really 
doubting  the  General's  loyalty,  he  probably  deemed  it 
necessary  to  let  him  know  how  others  felt  on  the  subject. 
Perhaps  the  President  hoped,  by  a  revelation  of  this  sort, 
to  sting  that  self-satisfied  officer  into  doing  what  had 
become  as  important  to  his  impaired  reputation  as  to 
the  success  of  the  Union  arms.  At  all  events,  we  have 
McClellan's  own  word  for  an  extraordinary  interview 
between  Lincoln  and  himself.57  The  President,  according 
to  this  account,  sent  for  his  General-in-Chief,  early  on 
the  morning  of  the  8th  of  March.  After  expressing  his 
chagrin  at  the  outcome  of  the  Harper's  Ferry  expedition,58 
Mr.  Lincoln  said  that  he  desired  to  talk  about  another  — 
"  a  very  ugly  matter."  It  had  been  represented  to  him, 
he  continued,  that  the  movement  by  way  of  the  Lower 
Chesapeake  "  was  conceived  with  the  traitorous  intent  of 
removing  its  defenders  from  Washington,  and  thus  giving 
over  to  the  enemy  the  Capital  and  the  government,  thus 
left  defenceless."  If  it  was  the  President's  purpose  to 
arouse  McClellan,  he  certainly  succeeded  ;  for  the  General 
resented,  with  hot  indignation,  this  imputation  on  his 


360       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

honor.  Mr.  Lincoln  hastened  to  assure  him  "that  he 
merely  repeated  what  others  had  said,  and  that  he  did 
not  believe  a  word  of  it,"  himself.  McClellan  replied 
with  a  suggestion,  by  which  he  hoped  to  set  all  doubts  on 
the  subject  at  rest.  He  had  called,  he  explained,  a  meet- 
ing of  division  commanders  at  his  headquarters,  that  very 
morning,  to  consider  another  proposed  attack  upon  the 
enemy's  Potomac  batteries.  Why  not  lay  before  them, 
he  asked,  the  question  of  the  Chesapeake  route  ?  And  to 
this  the  President  readily  consented. 

It  was  more  than  a  coincidence  that  Mr.  Lincoln  on 
the  same  day  emphasized,  by  a  step  in  another  direction, 
the  passing  of  McClellan' s  military  supremacy.  For  some 
time  the  advisability  of  dividing  the  Army  of  the  Poto- 
mac into  army  corps  had  been  under  consideration.  That 
so  large  a  body  of  troops  could  not  be  maneuvered  to 
advantage  by  brigades  and  divisions  was  generally  con- 
ceded. All  the  experienced  officers  whom  the  President 
consulted  advised  against  a  campaign  in  any  but  corps 
formation ;  every  modern  text-book  that  he  could  lay  his 
hands  on,  as  well  as  the  practice  in  European  warfare, 
sustained  this  counsel ;  and  leading  supporters  of  the 
administration,  especially  the  Committee  on  the  Conduct 
of  the  War,  besought  him  to  effect  such  an  organization 
before  the  army  took  the  field.  McClellan,  himself, 
acknowledged  the  wisdom  of  the  measure.  Nevertheless 
when  urged  by  Mr.  Lincoln  to  form  army  corps,  ht 
declared  his  intention  not  to  do  so  until  active  service 
"  had  indicated  what  general  officers  were  best  fitted  to 
exercise  those  most  important  commands."  Taking  the 
ground,  correctly  enough,  that  incompetent  men  in  such 
positions  "might  cause  irreparable  damage,"  he  deter- 
mined to  pick  his  corps  commanders,  later  on,  with  the 
greatest  possible  care.59  It  did  not  occur  to  him,  appar- 
ently, that  any  one  but  he  would  venture  to  make  these 
selections  —  they  came  so  clearly  within  his  province. 
Had  he  not,  moreover,  while  at  the  zenith  of  his  popularity, 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         361 

served  notice  on  the  administration  concerning  such  very 
matters  ?  In  a  letter  addressed  to  Secretary  Cameron,  as 
early  as  September  8,  1861,  McClellan  had  written:  — 

"  I  have  selected  general  and  staff  officers  with  distinct 
reference  to  their  fitness  for  the  important  duties  that  may 
devolve  upon  them.  Any  change  or  disposition  of  such 
officers  without  consulting  the  commanding  General  may 
fatally  impair  the  efficiency  of  this  army  and  the  success 
of  its  operations.  I  therefore  earnestly  request  that  in 
future  every  general  officer  appointed  upon  my  recom- 
mendation shall  be  assigned  to  this  army ;  that  I  shall 
have  full  control  of  the  officers  and  troops  in  this  depart- 
ment ;  and  that  no  orders  shall  be  given  respecting  my 
command  without  my  being  first  consulted.  It  is  evident 
that  I  cannot  otherwise  be  responsible  for  the  success  of 
our  arms."  m 

The  theory  on  which  this  precept  rested  was  sound. 
But  the  all-powerful  General,  who  asserted  his  preroga- 
tive with  such  spirit  in  September,  1861,  had,  during  the 
intervening  six  months,  frittered  away,  by  this  and  that, 
as  we  have  seen,  much  of  the  prestige  essential  to  the  lofty 
part  he  desired  to  play.  A  military  role  can  be  sustained, 
in  the  last  analysis,  by  military  prowess  alone.  The 
McClellan  who  stood  before  Lincoln  on  the  defensive,  in 
that  early  morning  interview  after  Harper's  Ferry,  was  a 
very  different  man,  so  to  say,  from  the  McClellan  to  whom 
Lincoln  had  deferred  after  Bull  Run.  At  all  events,  the 
President  treated  him  differently.  For  that  very  day,  as 
soon  as  their  conflicting  plans  of  campaign  were  submitted 
to  the  division  commanders,  Mr.  Lincoln,  anticipating  an 
advance  either  way,  took  the  matter  of  army  corps  into 
his  own  hands.  Without  consulting  the  General-in-Chief, 
he  framed  the  "President's  General  War  Order  No.  2," 
directing  McClellan  forthwith  to  organize  that  part  of 
the  Army  of  the  Potomac  which  was  intended  for  active 
operations  into  four  corps ;  and  assigning  them,  respec- 
tively, to  the  ranking  division  commanders,  Generals 


362       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

McDowell,  Sumner,  Heintzelman,  and  Keyes.61  Three  of 
these,  it  has  been  frequently  remarked,  were  known  to 
favor  the  President's  rather  than  McClellan's  plan.  That 
they  felt  out  of  sympathy,  to  this  extent  at  least,  with  the 
General-in-Chief,  and  that  none  of  the  appointments  were, 
for  other  reasons,  of  an  ideal  character,  cannot  be  gain- 
said. Yet  it  was  once  in  McClellan's  power  —  his  own 
partisans  agree  —  to  order  things  otherwise.  Had  he 
formed  the  army  corps  when  Mr.  Lincoln  desired  them,  the 
selection  of  their  commanders  would,  most  likely,  have 
been  left  to  his  judgment.  As  it  was,  lieutenants  whom 
he  would  probably  not  have  chosen  were,  at  the  eleventh 
hour,  imposed  upon  him,  to  the  exclusion  of  officers  who 
enjoyed  his  confidence.  McClellan's  first  intimation  of 
these  radical  changes  in  his  own  army  is  said  to  have 
reached  him  only  after  the  order  had  been  issued.  Sur- 
prised and  pained  beyond  measure,  he  realized  too  late 
what  embarrassment  might  have  been  averted  in  this  quar- 
ter by  more  courteous  attention  to  the  President's  wishes. 
Meanwhile  the  council  of  war  called  by  the  General-in- 
Chief  had  taken  place.  Eight  of  the  twelve  generals  pre- 
sent, without  discussion  or  deliberation,  voted  offhand  in 
favor  of  McClellan's  plan.62  At  a  subsequent  interview 
between  them  and  the  President,  in  which  the  Secretary 
of  War  participated,  these  officers  were  put  through  a 
searching  examination ;  but  the  same  majority  stood  by 
their  approval  of  the  Chesapeake  route.  Before  so  strong 
an  endorsement  Mr.  Lincoln's  opposition  fell  away,  once 
for  all.  Mr.  Stanton,  on  the  other  hand,  stubbornly  per- 
sisted in  his  antagonism.  Like  Chase,  Wade,  Chandler, 
and  so  many  other  earnest  leaders,  the  head  of  the  War 
Department  was  fast  losing  confidence  in  the  commander 
upon  whom  they  had  all  looked,  not  many  months  previous, 
as  the  rising  hope  of  the  Union  cause.  McClellan's  Fabian 
tactics  cost  him  much.  Perhaps  the  heaviest  single  price 
was  Stanton's  regard.  Totally  unlike  Lincoln  in  this  re- 
spect, the  grim  war  minister,  once  a  man  had  fallen  under 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         363 

his  displeasure,  could  never  again  entirely  divest  himself 
of  the  resulting  prejudice.  It  was  with  more  than  his 
customary  vehemence,  therefore,  that  Stanton,  believing 
firmly  in  the  President's  plan,  opposed  McClellan's.  He 
decried  —  to  repeat  somewhat  from  a  preceding  chapter — 
the  project  under  which  more  than  one  hundred  thousand 
troops  were  to  be  set  afloat  in  wooden  bottoms  to  seek  a 
battle-field  many  miles  away,  while  the  enemy  lay  fortified 
before  the  Capital.  Stanton's  ingenious  reasoning  —  for 
the  question  was  discussed  at  length  —  failed  to  move  Mr. 
Lincoln.  Admitting  the  force  of  the  Secretary's  objec- 
tions, he  remained  steadfast  in  his  decision  to  abide  by 
the  action  of  the  council,  and  instructed  him  to  proceed 
with  the  preparations  for  the  campaign.  McClellan's  plan 
was  to  have  right  of  way,  after  all. 

How  closely  Mr.  Lincoln,  notwithstanding  this  conces- 
sion, adhered  to  some  of  his  purposes,  may  be  gathered 
from  the  "  President's  General  War  Order  No.  3."  This, 
like  its  immediate  predecessor,  he  issued  without  consult- 
ing McClellan,  on  that  same  eventful  8th  of  March.  It 
prohibited  any  change  of  base  by  the  Army  of  the  Poto- 
mac, unless  such  a  force  were  stationed  around  Washing- 
ton as  would,  "  in  the  opinion  of  the  General-in-Chief  and 
the  commanders  of  all  the  army  corps,"  leave  that  city 
"  entirely  secure."  It  ordered  "  an  immediate  effort  to 
capture  the  enemy's  batteries  "  upon  the  Lower  Potomac ; 
and,  until  this  was  accomplished,  "no  more  than  two 
army  corps  "  were  to  embai'k  on  the  Chesapeake.  Finally, 
the  movement  down  the  bay  was  to  begin  "as  early  as  the 
18th  day  of  March,"  with  the  General-in-Chief  held  per- 
sonally "  responsible  "  for  attention  to  that  date.63  The 
peremptory,  almost  harsh  tones  of  this  order  should  have 
warned  McClellan  that  he  had  won  a  precarious  victory. 
Still,  it  maybe  doubted  whether  the  President's  rising  ire, 
or  his  anxiety  for  the  safety  of  Washington,  made  much 
of  an  impression  on  the  General's  mind.  He  was,  how- 
ever, greatly  troubled  over  the  restrictions  laid  upon  him 


364      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

in  these  last  two  mandates  of  the  President  —  General 
Orders  Nos.  2  and  3.  They  are  not,  it  is  true,  entirely 
defensible  from  a  military  point  of  view ;  yet  McClellan 
had  clearly  brought  them  upon  himself  by  his  own  errors, 
his  dilatory  tactics,  and,  above  all,  his  total  failure  to 
recognize  Lincoln's  dual  responsibility  to  the  nation  for 
success  in  the  field  as  well  as  in  the  cabinet.  It  has  been 
said,  with  some  force,  that  a  General-in-Chief  who  needed 
to  be  hampered  by  such  orders  had  outlived  his  usefulness 
in  that  exalted  office.  Doubtless  the  President  was  ap- 
proaching this  conclusion,  but  he  did  not  contemplate  the 
removal  of  McClellan  from  the  command  of  the  particular 
army  which  owed  so  much  of  its  discipline  and  enthusiasm 
to  the  General's  administrative  talents.  Lincoln's  faith 
in  McClellan's  star  was  far  from  spent.  He  still  believed 
that  this  commander,  at  the  head  of  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac,  —  once  they  were  fairly  launched  together  upon 
a  campaign,  —  would  justify  all  his  forbearance. 

The  test  came  sooner  than  the  President  had  expected. 
Within  twenty-four  hours  after  Orders  2  and  3  were 
put  forth,  on  Sunday,  March  9,  startling  news  reached 
Washington  —  the  Confederate  batteries  on  the  Potomac 
had  been  abandoned,  and  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia 
was  retreating  southward  from  Manassas.  Incredulous, 
almost  stupefied,  at  this  unlooked-for  intelligence,  Mc- 
Clellan, as  soon  as  it  could  be  verified,  ordered  the  entire 
army  to  move,  the  following  day,  upon  the  enemy's  lines. 
Before  he  started,  however,  occurred  a  tilt  between  him 
and  the  Secretary  of  War,  which  illustrates  down  to  how 
slender  a  thread  had  worn  the  once  cordial  ties  between 
the  General-in-Chief  and  the  government.  During  that 
Sunday  evening,  McClellan  telegraphed  to  Stanton,  from 
the  front :  — 

"  In  the  arrangements  for  the  advance  of  to-morrow  it 
is  impossible  to  carry  into  effect  the  arrangements  for  the 
formation  of  army  corps.  I  am  obliged  to  take  groups  as 
I  find  them  and  to  move  them  by  divisions.  I  respect- 


THE   YOUNG   NAPOLEON         365 

fully  ask  a  suspension  of  the  order  directing  it,  till  the 
present  movement  be  over." 

To  this  the  Secretary  curtly  replied :  — 

"  I  think  it  is  the  duty  of  every  officer  to  obey  the  Pre- 
sident's orders,  nor  can  I  see  any  reason  why  you  should 
not  obey  them  in  present  instance.  1  must  therefore  de- 
cline to  suspend  them." 

At  one  o'clock  A.  M.,  McClellan  sent  this  explanation 
over  the  wire :  — 

"  You  have  entirely  misunderstood  me,  and  the  idea  I 
intended  to  convey  was  simply  that  I  could  not,  under  the 
pressure  of  the  new  aspect  of  affairs,  immediately  carry  out 
the  President's  orders  as  to  the  formation  of  army  corps. 
It  is  absolutely  necessary  that  I  should  at  once  move 
divisions  as  they  stand.  If  you  require  me  to  suspend 
movements  until  army  corps  can  be  formed,  I  will  do  so ; 
but  I  regard  it  as  a  military  necessity  that  the  divisions 
should  move  to  the  front  at  once,  without  waiting  for  the 
formation  of  army  corps.  If  it  is  your  order  to  wait  until 
the  corps  can  be  formed,  I  will,  of  course,  wait.  I  will 
comply  with  the  President's  order  as  soon  as  possible. 
I  intended  to  do  so  to-morrow,  but  circumstances  have 
changed.  If  you  desire  it,  I  will  at  once  countermand  all 
the  orders  I  have  given  for  an  advance  until  the  formation 
of  army  corps  is  completed.  I  have  only  to  add  that  the 
orders  I  have  given  to-night  to  advance  early  in  the  morn- 
ing will  be  dictated  solely  by  the  present  position  of  affairs. 
If  the  leave  to  suspend  the  order  be  granted,  there  will 
be  no  unreasonable  delay  in  the  formation  of  army  corps. 
I  await  your  reply  here.  If  you  so  direct  that  I  may 
countermand  my  orders  at  once,  please  reply  at  once." 

Stanton  promptly  rejoined  :  — 

"  I  do  not  understand  the  President's  order  as  restraining 
you  from  any  military  movement  by  divisions  or  otherwise 
that  circumstances  in  your  judgment  may  render  expedient, 
and  I  certainly  do  not  wish  to  delay  or  change  any  move- 
ment whatever  that  you  have  made  or  desire  to  make.  I 


366       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

only  wish  to  avoid  giving  my  sanction  to  a  suspension  of  a 
policy  which  the  President  has  ordered  to  be  pursued.  But 
if  you  think  that  the  terms  of  the  order  as  it  stands  would 
operate  to  retard  or  in  any  way  resti-ain  movements  that 
circumstances  require  to  be  made  before  the  army  corps 
are  formed,  I  will  assume  the  responsibility  of  suspending 
the  order  for  that  purpose,  and  authorize  you  to  make  any 
movement  by  divisions  or  otherwise,  according  to  your  own 
judgment,  without  stopping  to  form  the  army  corps.  My 
desire  is  that  you  should  exercise  every  power  that  you 
think  present  circumstances  require  to  be  exercised,  with- 
out delay ;  but  I  want  that  you  and  I  shall  not  seem  to 
be  desirous  of  opposing  an  order  of  the  President  without 
necessity.  I  say,  therefore,  move  just  as  you  think  best 
now,  and  let  the  other  matter  stand  until  it  can  be  done 
without  impeding  movements." 

It  was  nearly  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  when  the 
General  closed  the  incident  with  this  message :  — 

"Your  reply  received.  The  troops  are  in  motion.  I 
thank  you  for  your  despatch.  It  relieves  me  much,  and 
you  will  be  convinced  that  I  have  not  asked  too  much  of 
you."  M 

Redeeming  his  promise,  three  days  later,  McClellan 
constituted  the  army  corps  in  accordance  with  Mr.  Lin- 
coln's orders.65 

Important  history  was  making  in  the  mean  time.  The 
Army  of  the  Potomac  had  started  at  last.  Advancing  into 
Virginia  with  unaccustomed  celerity,  it  gallantly  stormed 
those  abandoned  works  at  Centreville  and  Manassas.  The 
recent  tenants,  it  is  true,  were  safely  on  their  way  to  a  new 
haven  beyond  the  Rappahannock.  As  they  had  taken  the 
precaution,  moreover,  to  destroy  the  bridges  behind  them, 
there  was  nothing  left  for  the  disgusted  pursuers  but  to 
retrace  their  steps  from  the  deserted  camps.  On  all  sides 
were  unmistakable  indications  of  how  inferior,  in  numbers 
and  munitions  of  war,  had  been  the  Confederate  force 
to  the  splendid  array  which  it  had  kept  at  bay  so  long. 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         367 

That  the  dismantled  barracks  evidently  had  not  held  one 
half  the  men  McClellan  affirmed  to  be  there,  looked  bad 
enough ;  but  that,  for  lack  of  sufficient  heavy  artillery, 
painted  logs  filled  a  number  of  the  embrasures  in  the 
fortifications,  was  infinitely  worse.  These  "  Quaker  guns," 
as  they  were  called,  made  the  whole  North  laugh.  On  the 
under  side  of  its  merriment,  however,  lay  a  feeling  of 
mortification  and  disappointment  that  boded  no  good  to 
the  fame  of  the  "  Young  Napoleon."  Painfully  alive  to  the 
blow-holes  in  his  armor,  he  poured  out  the  bitterness  of 
his  soul  to  the  fond  wife  at  home.  "  I  regret,"  he  wrote 
from  Fairfax  Court  House,  "  that  the  rascals  are  after  me 
again.  I  had  been  foolish  enough  to  hope  that  when  I 
went  into  the  field  they  would  give  me  some  rest,  but  it 
seems  otherwise.  Perhaps  I  should  have  expected  it.  If 
I  can  get  out  of  this  scrape,  you  will  never  catch  me  in  the 
power  of  such  a  set  again.  The  idea  of  persecuting  a  man 
behind  his  back!  I  suppose  they  are  now  relieved  from 
the  pressure  of  their  fears  by  the  retreat  of  the  enemy, 
and  that  they  will  increase  in  virulence."  w  Who  "  the 
rascals  "  were  may  be  surmised.  The  men  who  had,  week 
after  week,  supported  the  President's  plan  for  immediate 
operations  against  the  enemy's  position  at  Manassas  now 
claimed  that  Mr.  Lincoln's  judgment  had  been  vindicated 
by  the  event.  They  grew  hot  over  McClellan's  failure  to 
seize  so  cheap  a  victory  when  it  lay  within  his  grasp,  and 
sarcastic  at  the  manner  in  which  vast  hosts  and  impreg- 
nable ramparts  had  melted  away  together.  What  seemed 
most  difficult  to  understand  was  the  General's  ignorance 
of  how  matters  had  been  going  within  the  lines  of  an 
enemy  stationed,  for  over  seven  months,  not  more  than  a 
day's  march  from  his  camp.67  McClellan's  loyalty  again 
became  a  debated  question,  and  friends  of  the  adminis- 
tration once  more  beset  the  Executive  with  appeals  for 
his  removal. 

Circumstances    had   certainly  conspired  to  place   the 
General  in  an  awkward  situation ;  yet  he,  or  more  pre- 


368       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

eisely  speaking,  his  facile  pen,  was  almost  equal  to  the 
emergency.  In  his  official  papers  he  ascribes  the  Confed- 
erates' "very  sudden"  retreat  to  information  which  they 
had  received  of  his  intended  movement  down  the  Chesa- 
peake, and  he  points  to  this  retirement  toward  Richmond 
as  conclusive  proof  that  his  projected  operations  would 
have  compelled  the  evacuation  of  Manassas.  Persisting, 
moreover,  in  his  delusions,  or  those  of  his  secret  service 
officers,  as  to  the  enemy's  strength,  he  claims  to  have 
found  ample  corroboration  of  their  estimates.  A  stack 
of  affidavits  were  introduced  to  bear  out  the  official  re- 
port of  March  8  that  credited  the  southern  army  before 
Washington  with  "115,500  men,  about  300  field  guns, 
and  from  26  to  30  siege  guns."  Upon  these  figures  he 
impales,  with  fine  scorn,  "  the  ignorance  which  led  some 
journals  at  that  time,  and  persons  in  high  office,  unwit- 
tingly to  trifle  with  the  reputation  of  an  army,  and  to 
delude  the  country  with  Quaker-gun  stories  of  the  defences 
and  gross  understatements  of  the  numbers  of  the  enemy."  m 
Verily  McClellan's  pen  was  mightier  than  his  sword,  yet 
it  could  not  slay  the  facts.  It  is  now  established  beyond 
a  doubt  that  General  Joseph  E.  Johnston,  commanding 
the  Confederate  Army  of  Northern  Virginia,  had  long 
regarded  his  position  at  Manassas  and  Centreville  as  un- 
tenable. Anticipating  attack,  he  commenced  on  the  23d 
of  February  the  retrograde  movement  which  was  skil- 
fully completed  on  the  9th  of  March.  So  the  "  very  sud- 
den" retreat  which  McClellan  and  his  eulogists  charged 
to  indiscreet  disclosures  of  what  took  place  at  the  council 
of  March  8  m  had,  in  fact,  been  going  on  for  two  weeks 
previous  to  that  date.  We  have  General  Johnston's  own 
word  for  it  that  he  received  no  warning  concerning  the 
Chesapeake  plan,  and  that  his  withdrawal  was  due  solely 
to  fear  of  some  such  flank  movement  as  Lincoln  is  now 
known  to  have  advocated.  An  advance  along  this  route 
the  Confederate  leader  looked  upon  as  "the  most  diffi- 
cult to  meet."  True  to  the  rules  of  strategy,  he  assumed 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         369 

that  McClellan  would  discover  the  weak  spot,  and  strike 
there.70  But  nothing,  as  we  have  seen,  could  convince 
the  Union  commander  of  his  opportunity.  During  the 
very  period  in  which  he  was  declaring  the  President's  plan 
impracticable,  chiefly  on  the  ground  that  the  Manassas 
line  held  a  force,  variously  estimated  at  from  115,500  to 
150,000  men,  Johnston's  official  report  showed  just  47,306 
men,  present  for  duty,  in  the  entire  Department  of  North- 
ern Virginia.71  McClellan,  at  the  same  time,  had  present 
for  duty  in  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  officers  and  men 
amounting  to  185,420.72  Nor  does  the  General-in-Chief 
emerge  in  any  better  light  from  the  episode  of  the  imita- 
tion guns.  His  sweeping  denial  breaks  down  beneath  the 
evidence  of  trustworthy  men  who  saw  them  in  the  defences, 
to  say  nothing  of  General  Johnston's  explanation  of  how 
they  came  to  be  there.  The  Confederate  commander, 
referring  to  his  officers  at  Centreville,  writes :  — 

"  As  we  had  not  artillery  enough  for  their  works  and 
for  the  army  fighting  elsewhere,  at  the  same  time,  rough 
wooden  imitations  of  guns  were  made,  and  kept  near  the 
embrasures,  in  readiness  for  exhibition  in  them.  To  con- 
ceal the  absence  of  carriages,  the  embrasures  were  covered 
with  sheds  made  of  bushes.  These  were  the  Quaker  guns 
afterward  noticed  in  northern  papers." 73 

At  every  essential  point  in  this  affair  McClellan  stands 
condemned.  To  what  precise  extent  was  of  course  not 
revealed  until  long  thereafter ;  yet  enough  became  known 
without  delay  to  justify  the  opinion  that  he  had  been 
completely  outgeneraled. 

When  failure  overtakes  a  commander  through  his  own 
repeated  neglect  to  carry  out  the  desires  of  his  superiors, 
he  becomes  a  proper  subject  for  discipline.  So  at  last 
thought  Lincoln.  Though  "slow  to  smite  and  swift  to 
spare,"  he  could  withhold  the  blow  no  longer.  For,  what 
the  President's  most  influential  advisers  had  not  suc- 
ceeded in  bringing  about,  speedily  ensued  xipon  McClel- 
lan's  fruitless  "promenade"  to  Manassas.  This  revelation 


370       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

of  how  much  the  General's  inaction  probably  cost  the 
tJnion  cause  aroused  Lincoln's  belated  indignation.  All 
the  pent-up  irritation  of  weeks  found  vent  in  one  mighty 
outburst  of  wrath.  A  scene  not  unlike  that  enacted  by 
President  Washington  when  he  received  the  tidings  of  St. 
Glair's  disaster  is  said  to  have  taken  place.  Lincoln's 
passion  was  hailed  by  Senator  Chandler,  who  related 
the  incident,  as  an  omen  of  better  days.  "Old  Abe,"  said 
he  exultingly,  "  is  mad,  and  the  war  will  now  go  on." 74 
Before  the  Executive  slept  on  the  first  night  that  saw 
the  retreating  Confederates  securely  encamped  behind  the 
Rappahannock,  he  issued  the  "President's  Special  War 
Order  No.  3."  75  This  mandate  deposed  McClellan  from 
the  command-in-chief  on  the  ostensible  ground  that  he 
had  "  personally  taken  the  field,"  and  limited  his  author- 
ity to  the  Department  of  the  Potomac.  All  department 
commanders,  furthermore,  including  several  newly  ap- 
pointed, were  instructed  to  report  directly  to  the  Secre- 
tar}r  of  War.78  Here  was  a  serious  reverse  in  McClellan's 
fortunes,  yet  he  knew  nothing  about  it  until  the  Washing- 
ton newspapers  reached  Fairfax  Court  House  on  the  fol- 
lowing day.  Taken  "  entirely  by  surprise,"  as  he  tells  us, 
the  General  appears  to  have  seen  no  reason  —  and  how 
characteristic  of  the  man  that  was  !  —  for  Mr.  Lincoln's 
order,  while  his  partisans  resented  the  way  in  which  the 
change  had  been  made  perhaps  more  than  the  act  itself. 
Nevertheless,  McClellan  kissed  the  chastening  rod.  He 
straightway  sent  the  President  a  graceful  letter,  in  which, 
with  expressions  of  esteem  and  gratitude,  the  writer 
promised  cheerful  submission.77 

One  of  McClellan's  first  steps  thereafter  was  to  obey 
Mr.  Lincoln's  General  Order  No.  3,  for  a  council  of  corps 
commanders.  Summoning  the  four  who  were  with  him  at 
Fairfax  Court  House,  as  has  been  narrated  in  a  previous 
chapter,  he  laid  the  President's  requirements  before  them. 
They  unanimously  pronounced  the  Chesapeake  route  by 
way  of  Urbana,  on  the  Rappahaunock,  unavailable,  since 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         371 

the  enemy  had  retreated  south  of  the  river ;  and  agreed 
that  the  projected  operations  down  the  bay  could  best 
be  carried  out  —  the  navy  cooperating — on  the  peninsula 
between  the  York  and  the  James  rivers,  with  Fortress 
Monroe  as  a  base.  They  stipulated,  moreover,  that  the 
force  left  behind  for  the  protection  of  Washington  should 
be  sufficient  "to  give  an  entire  feeling  of  security  for 
its  safety  from  menace."  This  required  between  40,000 
and  55,000  men,  according  to  the  commanders'  several 
estimates,  in  which  McClellan  apparently  acquiesced.78 
Though  the  Peninsula  plan  had  been  described  by  him, 
not  many  weeks  before,  as  a  last  resort,  to  be  adopted 
only  when  the  worst  came  to  the  worst,  he  approved  of 
that  too,  and  telegraphed  Mr.  Stanton  :  "  The  council 
of  commanders  of  army  corps  have  unanimously  agreed 
upon  a  plan  of  operations.  General  McDowell  will  at  once 
proceed  with  it  to  Washington  and  lay  it  before  you." 

The  Secretary  immediately  replied :  "  Whatever  plan 
has  been  agreed  upon,  proceed  at  once  to  execute  with- 
out losing  an  hour  for  my  approval."  79 

Later  in  the  day,  however,  came  the  President's  ap- 
proval, in  a  form  which  still  further  illustrates  the  temper 
of  the  government.  Directing  McClellan  again  to  "  leave 
Washington  entirely  secure,"  it  authorized  him  to  choose 
a  new  base  anywhere  between  Fortress  Monroe  and  the 
Capital,  so  long  as  he  moved  "  the  army  at  once  in  pursuit 
of  the  enemy,  by  some  route."  *°  Official  courtesy  does  not 
admit  of  much  stronger  language  ;  but  between  the  lines 
we  read,  as  plainly  as  did  a  noted  war  correspondent :  — 

"  Go  anywhere,  move  anywhere  you  please,  only  let  us 
have  an  end  of  excuses  —  do  something." 81 

McClellan  complied.  He  made  an  address  to  his  sol- 
diers in  approved  Napoleonic  style,  and  marched  them 
to  Alexandria,  where  transports  were  collecting  for  the 
voyage  down  the  Chesapeake. 

Before  sailing,  McClellan  was  again  made  to  feel  how 
great  a  change  had  come  over  his  standing  with  the  Presi- 


372       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

dent.  Mr.  Lincoln,  while  on  a  visit  to  Alexandria,  men. 
tioned  to  him  that  he  was  "  strongly  pressed  "  by  friends  of 
Fremont  to  transfer  Blenker's  command  of  about  10,000 
men  from  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  to  the  newly  created 
Mountain  Department.  It  was  not  his  intention,  he  added, 
when  the  General  objected,  to  deprive  McClellan  of  this 
division.  Yet  the  discussion  touched  that  officer  on  a  sen- 
sitive spot.  In  the  first  flush  of  his  power,  during  the 
autumn  of  1861,  he  had  forbidden  his  superiors  to  detach 
any  troops  from  the  army  under  him,  in  language  even  more 
dictatorial  than  that  employed  to  protest  against  their 
appointment  of  officers  without  his  consent ; 82  and  the 
President  had  meekly  promised,  at  the  time,  to  leave  his 
force  intact.  Such  promises  are  outlawed,  however,  as  the 
circumstances  under  which  they  were  given  alter.  Thus, 
no  doubt,  thought  Mr.  Lincoln  six  months  later,  in  the 
spring  of  1862.  For,  changing  his  mind  a  few  days  after 
the  interview  at  Alexandria,  he  ordered  Blenker's  division 
to  join  Fremont.  "  I  did  so  with  great  pain,"  he  wrote  to 
McClellan,  "  understanding  that  you  would  wish  it  other- 
wise. If  you  could  know  the  full  pressure  of  the  case,  I 
am  confident  that  you  would  justify  it,  even  beyond  a 
mere  acknowledgment  that  the  Commander-in-Chief  may 
order  what  he  pleases."  ra  This  act  has  properly  enough 
been  condemned  by  military  writers.  Still,  in  justice  to 
the  President,  it  should  be  said  that  by  placating  the  Fre- 
mont wing  of  the  Republican  Party,  he  hoped  to  keep 
united  the  support  without  which  the  war  could  not  have 
been  carried  on.  Unfortunately,  his  political  cares  evoked 
no  sympathy  from  McClellan.  The  General,  it  is  true, 
at  a  later  interview,  acquiesced  reluctantly  in  what  he 
regarded  as  an  unwarrantable  exercise  of  the  supreme  au- 
thority ;  but  this  was  only  after  Mr.  Lincoln  had  assured 
him  —  so  McClellan  relates  —  that  no  other  troops  should 
be  withdrawn  from  his  command.  Yet,  worse  remained 
behind. 

Hardly  had  McClellan,  with  part  of  his  army,  reached 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         373 

Fortress  Monroe,  when  a  cry  went  up  that  he  had  left 
Washington  insecure.  An  anxious  investigation  by  the 
War  Department  followed.  This  revealed,  as  was  fully 
narrated  elsewhere,  less  than  half  the  number  of  troops 
prescribed  by  the  corps  commanders,  on  guard  over  the 
city.  Lincoln's  order,  so  oft  repeated,  to  leave  the  Capi- 
tal "  entirely  secure "  had  been  flatly  disobeyed.  That 
McClellan,  after  his  recent  discipline  at  the  hands  of 
the  President,  should  again  have  ventured  to  pit  his  will 
against  Lincoln's,  in  a  matter  of  such  moment,  seems  in- 
conceivable. The  General  himself,  as  well  as  his  defenders, 
disclaim  that  he  did  so.  By  what  might  fairly  be  called  a 
plea  in  confession  and  avoidance,  they  assert  that  more 
than  the  required  number  of  men  were  left  at  Manassas, 
in  the  valley  of  the  Shenandoah,  before  Washington,  and 
elsewhere ;  but  they  fail  utterly  to  show,  as  indeed  they 
cannot,  that  McClellan  had  heeded  the  President's  explicit 
instructions  to  leave,  "in  and  about  Washington,"  the 
force  deemed  necessary  for  its  protection  by  the  council 
of  corps  commanders.  Nor  does  it  improve  the  General's 
case  to  treat  with  contempt  Lincoln's  acute  anxiety  for 
the  safety  of  the  National  Capital.84  Unfortunately  situ- 
ated as  it  was  near  the  frontier,  that  city,  on  several  occa- 
sions during  the  war,  narrowly  escaped  capture.  Such  an 
event  would  have  been  damaging  enough  to  the  Union 
cause,  at  any  time  ;  in  the  spring  or  summer  of  1862, 
it  might  have  been  fatal.  The  fall  of  Washington,  to 
touch  upon  but  one  aspect  of  a  manifold  disaster,  would 
most  likely  have  precipitated  European  intervention  —  a 
proceeding  against  which  the  whole  diplomatic  strength 
of  the  administration  had  for  months  been  strained,  as 
against  dissolution  itself.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore, 
that  the  President  placed  the  defence  of  the  Capital  above 
every  other  strategic  consideration,  or  that  he  had  again 
and  again  renewed  his  instructions  to  McClellan  on  the 
subject. 

But  the  General  had  other  views.    Assuming  that  the 


374      LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

troops  left  in  northern  Virginia  were  ample,  all  told,  to 
guard  Washington,  he  had  deliberately  determined  not  to 
detach  from  his  main  army  the  number  of  men  required 
for  garrison  duty  by  Mr.  Lincoln's  orders.  Whether  or 
not  this  belief  was  well  founded  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
fact  of  McClellan's  insubordination.  Equally  beside  the 
question  is  his  much  quoted  argument  that  the  safety  of 
the  Union  Capital  could  best  be  secured  on  the  Peninsula, 
by  an  advance  in  force  against  Richmond.  Whether  Mc- 
Clellan  was  correct,  moreover,  in  believing  that  the  Con- 
federates would  surely  defend  the  lesser,  rather  than  seize 
the  greater  prize,  may  be  doubted.  According  to  military 
rules,  it  is  true,  the  defence  of  Washington  lay  at  the  gates 
of  Richmond;  but  unluckily,  some  of  the  southern  gen- 
erals, like  the  fencer  quoted  in  Macaulay,  did  not  always 
tight  by  rule.  Violating  the  very  A  B  C  of  warfare,  they 
more  than  once  thrust  in  quarte  when  they  should  have 
thrust  in  tierce,  and  incidentally,  be  it  said,  made  "a  hit,  a 
very  palpable  hit."  Had  Lee  found  the  Army  of  the  Poto- 
mac operating  on  the  Peninsula,  and  Washington  inade- 
quately guarded,  would  he  not  have  thrown  all  his  strength 
into  the  capture  of  that  city?  To  borrow  one  of  his  favor- 
ite expressions,  might  he  not  have  swapped  queens?85 
Or  worse  still,  was  there  any  assurance  that  he  could 
not  have  held  MeClellan  in  check  long  enough  to  take 
the  Federal  piece,  and  return  in  time  to  defend  his  own  ? 
The  Confederates  had  recently  demonstrated  their  skill 
at  blocking  the  Union  general's  way,  with  notably  inferior 
numbers ;  while  his  record  for  deliberation  hardly  war- 
ranted much  dependence  upon  him,  if  suddenly  recalled 
from  a  distant  field  to  rescue  the  Capital.  That  it  should 
now  be  imperiled,  or  even  subjected  to  a  chance  of  peril, 
after  so  many  cautions,  aroused  the  President's  just  indig- 
nation. There  seemed  but  a  single  thing  for  him  to  do. 
As  soon  as  the  extent  of  his  lieutenant's  disobedience  was 
definitely  ascertained,  he  ordered  one  of  the  army  corps, 
which  had  not  yet  embarked  for  the  Peninsula,  to  be 


THE   YOUNG   NAPOLEON         375 

held  back  for  the  protection  of  Washington.  General 
McDowell's  corps,  comprising  about  36,000  men  and  68 
guns,  was  accordingly  detached  from  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac.  Mr.  Lincoln,  at  the  same  time,  fearing  lest 
Fortress  Monroe  —  recently  placed  under  McClellan's 
command  —  might  also  be  stripped  of  its  troops,  further 
humiliated  the  General  by  practically  withdrawing  the 
post  from  his  control.86 

The  news  of  these  changes  staggered  McClellan.  He 
was  especially  distressed  over  the  loss  of  McDowell's 
corps,  to  which  had  been  assigned  the  important  duty  of 
turning  the  Confederate  positions  at  the  lower  end  of 
the  Peninsula,  while  the  main '  body  attacked  in  front. 
"  It  is  the  most  infamous  thing  that  history  has  recorded," 
read  his  private  comment  on  the  President's  course,  at 
the  time  ;  and  he  straightway  —  to  quote  him  further  — 
44 raised  an  awful  row."87  Protest  followed  protest,  until 
Lincoln  replied  :  — 

"  Your  despatches,  complaining  that  you  are  not  pro- 
perly sustained,  while  they  do  not  offend  me,  do  pain  me 
very  much. 

"  Blenker's  division  was  withdrawn  from  you  before  you 
left  here,  and  you  knew  the  pressure  under  which  I  did 
it,  and,  as  I  thought,  acquiesced  in  it  —  certainly  not 
without  reluctance. 

"After  you  left  I  ascertained  that  less  than  20,000 
unorganized  men,  without  a  single  field-battery,  were  all 
you  designed  to  be  left  for  the  defense  of  Washington 
and  Manassas  Junction,  and  part  of  this  even  was  to  go 
to  General  Hooker's  old  position ;  General  Banks's  corps, 
once  designed  for  Manassas  Junction,  was  divided  and 
tied  up  on  the  line  of  Winchester  and  Strasburg,  and 
could  not  leave  it  without  again  exposing  the  Upper  Poto- 
mac and  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad.  This  presented 
(or  would  present,  when  McDowell  and  Sumner  should  be 
gone)  a  great  temptation  to  the  enemy  to  turn  back  from 
the  Rappahannock  and  sack  Washington.  My  explicit 


376       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

order  that  Washington  should,  by  the  judgment  of  all 
the  commanders  of  corps,  be  left  entirely  secure,  had  been 
neglected.  It  was  precisely  this  that  drove  me  to  detain 
McDowell. 

"  I  do  not  forget  that  I  was  satisfied  with  your  arrange- 
ment to  leave  Banks  at  Manassas  Junction  ;  but  when 
that  arrangement  was  broken  up  and  nothing  was  substi- 
tuted for  it,  of  course  I  was  not  satisfied.  I  was  con- 
strained to  substitute  something  for  it  myself. 

"  And  now  allow  me  to  ask,  do  you  really  think  I  should 
permit  the  line  from  Richmond  via  Manassas  Junction  to 
this  city  to  be  entirely  open,  except  what  resistance  could 
be  presented  by  less  than  20,000  unorganized  troops? 
This  is  a  question  which  the  country  will  not  allow  me  to 
evade."  M 

Yet  McClellan  would  not,  or  could  not,  then  or  there- 
after, recognize  how  proper  was  Mr.  Lincoln's  solicitude. 
Indeed,  the  General's  military  harness  seems  to  have  been 
equipped  with  blinkers  of  so  prodigious  a  size  that,  while 
he  saw  his  own  ends  distinctly  enough,  the  duties  and 
prerogatives  of  this  mere  civilian  —  President  though  he 
was  —  made  but  a  hazy  impression  upon  his  mind.  Only 
such  purblindness  can  account  for  the  man's  conduct.  It 
never,  apparently,  occurred  to  him  that  he  was  in  any 
way  at  fault;  no  more  than  it  did  to  certain  military 
critics  who,  touched  by  the  plight  in  which  he  now  found 
himself,  lost  sight  of  his  own  responsibility  in  bringing  it 
about,  and  cried  out  against  the  administration.  Yet  the 
facts  confute  them.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  errors 
of  strategy  chai'geable  during  this  luckless  campaign  to 
Lincoln,  Stanton,  or  McClellan — for  honors  were  easy 
in  that  respect  —  the  loss  of  McDowell's  corps,  as  well 
as  the  resultant  train  of  mishaps,  lies,  beyond  a  doubt,  at 
the  recalcitrant  General's  door. 

McClellan's  disappointments  rapidly  multiplied.  Not 
only  did  he  find  himself  deprived  of  the  flanking  column 
that  was  to  have  turned  Yorktown,  but  the  gunboats 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         377 

upon  which  he  had  erroneously  depended  to  reduce  its 
batteries  failed  him  also  ;  while  the  Warwick  River,  repre- 
sented on  his  faulty  maps  as  off  to  one  side,  proved  to  be 
a  fortified  barrier  reaching  almost  across  the  Peninsula. 
Another  General  —  or  rather  a  truly  great  one  —  at  the 
head  of  so  powerful  an  army,  would  have  modified  his 
plans  to  meet  these  changed  conditions,  and  have  pushed 
on.  Not  so  McClellan.  Seized  with  his  old  weakness  for 
underrating  his  own  strength  and  overrating  that  of  the 
enemy,  he  sat  down  before  Yorktown  to  besiege  the 
place  scientifically.  Yet  Magruder,  the  Confederate  com- 
mander, opposed  him,  at  first,  with  but  11,000  men,  all 
told.  Six  thousand  of  these  were  required  for  the  fortifi- 
cations at  Yorktown  and  elsewhere,  leaving  only  5,000  to 
defend  the  line  of  the  Warwick,  thirteen  miles  across  the 
Peninsula.  This  latter  obstacle  could  easily  have  been 
pierced  by  McClellan's  overwhelming  force,  had  he  acted 
promptly.  When  it  became  apparent,  therefore,  that  the 
opening  skirmishes  were  not  to  be  followed  up  forthwith 
by  vigorous  fighting,  Magruder  could  hardly  believe  his 
good  luck.  He  reported  jubilantly :  — 

"  Thus,  with  5,000  men  exclusive  of  the  garrisons,  we 
stopped  and  held  in  check  over  100,000  of  the  enemy. 
Every  preparation  was  made  in  anticipation  of  another 
attack  by  the  enemy  ;  the  men  slept  in  the  trenches  and 
under  arms,  but  to  my  utter  surprise  he  permitted  day 
after  day  to  elapse  without  an  assault." 89 

Another  leading  Confederate  officer  wrote  to  Richmond, 
in  terms  of  mingled  contempt  and  astonishment :  — 

"No  one  but  McClellan  could  have  hesitated  to 
attack."  8° 

Meanwhile  Mr.  Lincoln,  not  less  surprised,  had  tele- 
graphed to  the  Union  commander  :  — 

"  I  think  you  better  break  the  enemy's  line  from  York- 
town  to  Warwick  River  at  once." 91 

Whereupon  McClellan  relieved  his  mind  privately  with 
the  scornful  comment :  — 


378       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

"  I  was  much  tempted  to  reply  that  he  had  better  come 
and  do  it  himself." 92 

In  official  despatches,  however,  to  the  President  and  to 
the  Secretary  of  War,  he  lamented,  on  the  following  day, 
that  he  could  not  attack  because  his  diminished  ranks 
numbered  but  85,000  men,  while  the  enemy's  had  been 
increased  to  "  100,000  and  probably  more."  It  is  now 
known  how  extravagant  this  figure  was.  No  considerable 
additions  to  Magruder's  small  force  were  made  for  several 
days  ;  and  when  reinforcements  did  come,  in  the  course  of 
the  month,  they  raised  the  effective  strength  of  Johnston, 
his  successor,  to  just  55,633  men.93  McClellan's  failure 
to  attack  before  these  new  troops  arrived  was  indefensible. 
Had  he  obeyed  Lincoln,  the  Union  army  would  not  have 
wasted  the  precious  month  before  Yorktown,  that  enabled 
the  South  to  concentrate  its  energies  around  Richmond ; 
the  Peninsular  campaign  would  have  furnished  a  vastly 
different  story ;  and  the  "  Young  Napoleon  "  might  have 
led  a  triumph  in  the  Confederate  Capital,  after  all. 

These  circumstances  the  downright  common  sense  of 
the  President  must  have  grasped  as  he  hastened  to  answer 
McClellan's  complaints. 

"  There  is  a  curious  mystery,"  he  wrote,  "  about  the 
number  of  the  troops  now  with  you.  When  I  telegraphed 
you  on  the  6th,  saying  you  had  over  100,000  with  you, 
I  had  just  obtained  from  the  Secretary  of  War  a  state- 
ment, taken  as  he  said  from  your  own  returns,  making 
108,000  then  with  you  and  en  route  to  you.  You  now  say 
you  will  have  but  85,000  when  all  en  route  to  you  shall 
have  reached  you.  How  can  this  discrepancy  of  23,000 
be  accounted  for  ? 

"As  to  General  Wool's  command  [at  Fortress  Monroe], 
I  understand  it  is  doing  for  you  precisely  what  a  like 
number  of  your  own  would  have  to  do  if  that  command 
was  away.  I  suppose  the  whole  force  which  has  gone  for- 
ward to  you  is  with  you  by  this  time  ;  and  if  so,  I  think 
it  is  the  precise  time  for  you  to  strike  a  blow.  By  delay 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         379 

the  enemy  will  relatively  gain  upon  you  —  that  is,  he 
.will  gain  faster  by  fortifications  and  reinforcements  than 
you  can  by  reinforcements  alone. 

"  And  once  more  let  me  tell  you,  it  is  indispensable  to 
you  that  you  strike  a  blow.  I  am  powerless  to  help  this. 
You  will  do  me  the  justice  to  remember  I  always  insisted 
that  going  down  the  bay  in  search  of  a  field,  instead  of 
fighting  at  or  near  Manassas,  was  only  shifting  and  not 
surmounting  a  difficulty  ;  that  we  would  find  the  same 
enemy  and  the  same  or  equal  intrenchments  at  either 
place.  The  country  will  not  fail  to  note  —  is  noting  now 
—  that  the  present  hesitation  to  move  upon  an  intrenched 
enemy  is  but  the  story  of  Manassas  repeated. 

"  I  beg  to  assure  you  that  I  have  never  written  you  or 
spoken  to  you  in  greater  kindness  of  feeling  than  now, 
nor  with  a  fuller  purpose  to  sustain  you,  so  far  as  in  my 
most  anxious  judgment  I  consistently  can  ;  but  you  must 
act."  M 

Unfortunately,  advice  from  this  quarter  was  as  cheap 
as  ever  in  the  estimation  of  the  General  commanding. 
His  overweening  professional  conceit  would  not  allow  him 
to  admit  that  Lincoln  could  be  right  in  a  military  matter, 
or  that  there  was  any  parallel  between  Manassas  and 
Yorktown.  So  the  siege  continued.  It  went  forward  with 
a  precision  which  would  have  done  credit  to  the  allies  in 
Flanders.  Yet  McClellan  was  not  so  much  occupied  that 
he  could  not  find  time  to  keep  up  an  almost  incessant 
demand  for  more  men.  Yielding  at  last  to  his  entreaties, 
the  President,  as  has  been  told  more  at  length  elsewhere, 
sent  down  Franklin's  division  of  McDowell's  corps.  We 
have  seen  how  these  reinforcements  lay  below  Yorktown 
a  whole  fortnight,  idly  in  the  transports  ;  and  how,  when 
preparations  for  a  grand  assault  all  along  the  line  had 
been  nearly  completed,  the  beleaguered  Confederates  COD* 
trived  to 

"  fold  their  tents,  like  the  Arabs, 
And  as  silently  steal  away." 


380       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

Lincoln's  phrase,  "the  story  of  Manassas  repeated," 
had  been  verified  in  more  ways  than  one.  For  the  second 
time  in  eight  weeks,  McClellan  led  the  Army  of  the  Poto- 
mac into  deserted  trenches,  under  conditions  that  rendered 
his  victory  a  tactical  defeat ;  and  for  the  second  time, 
the  President's  directions  to  attack,  had  they  been  fol- 
lowed, would  have  averted  a  costly  blunder. 

McClellan  of  course  blamed  this  inauspicious  opening 
of  the  Peninsular  campaign  on  the  authorities  at  Wash- 
ington. Nor  were  they  less  answerable,  according  to  his 
Own  Story,  for  the  failures  that  followed.  A  morbid 
belief  in  the  jealousy  of  Lincoln  and  his  advisers  had 
taken  firm  hold  of  him.  He  fancied  them  engaged  in  a 
conspiracy  to  sacrifice  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  rather 
than  allow  its  commander  to  reap  the  political  reward 
which  might  result  from  its  success.  "  That  they  were 
not  honest,"  he  says  in  his  book,  "  is  proved  by  the  fact 
that,  having  failed  to  force  me  to  advance  at  a  time 
when  an  advance  would  have  been  madness,  they  withheld 
the  means  of  success  when  I  was  in  contact  with  the 
enemy,  and  finally  relieved  me  from  command  when  the 
game  was  in  my  hands.  They  determined  that  I  should 
not  succeed,  and  carried  out  their  determinations  only 
too  well  and  at  a  fearful  sacrifice  of  blood,  time,  and 
treasure."  K  Having  worked  himself  into  this  frame  of 
mind,  McClellan  —  we  are  not  surprised  to  find  —  easily 
traversed  the  narrow  interval  between  contempt  for  his 
superiors  and  something  akin  to  hatred.  In  fact,  from 
the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  Peninsular  campaign,  his 
private  and  at  times  even  his  official  utterances  reveal 
far  liiore  enmity  toward  the  administration  than  toward 
the  opposing  foe. 

To  what  extreme  the  General's  embittered  feelings 
carried  him,  a  few  extracts  may  perhaps  sufficiently  show. 
Writing  to  his  wife,  on  the  steamer  which  conveyed  him 
down  the  Chesapeake,  he  exults  over  his  escape  from  "  that 
sink  of  iniquity,"  the  National  Capital.  A  few  days  later, 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         381 

after  the  McDowell  episode,  he  sends  her  this  soothing 
message :  — 

"  Don't  worry  about  the  wretches ;  they  have  done 
nearly  their  worst,  and  can't  do  much  more.  I  am  sure 
that  I  will  win  in  the  end,  in  spite  of  all  their  rascality. 
History  will  present  a  sad  record  of  these  traitors  who  are 
willing  to  sacrifice  the  country  and  its  army  for  personal 
spite  and  personal  aims.  The  people  will  soon  understand 
the  whole  matter." 

During  the  siege  of  Yorktown,  he  lamented :  — 

"  I  am  tired  of  public  life ;  and  even  now,  when  I  am 
doing  the  best  I  can  for  my  country  in  the  field,  I  know 
that  my  enemies  are  pursuing  me  more  remorselessly  than 
ever,  and  '  kind  friends  '  are  constantly  making  themselves 
agreeable  by  informing  me  of  the  pleasant  predicament  in 
which  I  am  —  the  rebels  on  one  side,  and  the  Abolitionists 
and  other  scoundrels  on  the  other." 

A  few  days  thereafter,  the  fond  wife  at  home  received 
this  despondent  note  :  — 

"  I  feel  that  the  fate  of  a  nation  depends  upon  me, 
and  I  feel  that  I  have  not  one  single  friend  at  the  seat  of 
government." 

So  the  General  punctuated  his  whole  luckless  expedition 
with  acrimonious  faultfindings.  Achilles  crying,  — 

"  My  wrongs,  my  wrongs,  my  constant  thought  engage," 

was  not  more  dismal.    On  one  occasion,  McClellan  writes: 
"  My  government,  alas  !  is  not  giving  me  any  aid." 
On  another,  a  midnight  postscript  reads :  — 
"  Those  hounds  in  Washington  are  after  me  again." 
Then  he  explains :  — 

"  I  am  as  anxious  as  any  human  being  can  be  to  finish 
this  war.  Yet  when  I  see  such  insane  folly  behind  me,  I 
feel  that  the  final  salvation  of  the  country  demands  the 
utmost  prudence  on  my  part,  and  that  I  must  not  run 
the  slightest  risk  of  disaster,  for  if  anything  happened  to 
this  army,  our  cause  would  be  lost.  .  .  .  But  I  will  yet 


382       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

succeed,  notwithstanding  all  they  do  and  leave  undone 
in  Washington  to  prevent  it.  I  would  not  have  on  my 
conscience  what  those  men  have  for  all  the  world." 

Still  later,  the  sympathetic  helpmeet  is  assured  :  — 

"  You  do  not  feel  one  bit  more  bitterly  towards  those 
people  than  I  do.  I  do  not  say  much  about  it,  but  I  fear 
they  have  done  all  that  cowardice  and  folly  can  do  to  ruin 
our  poor  country,  and  the  blind  people  seem  not  to  see  it. 
It  makes  my  blood  boil  when  I  think  of  it." 

And  again :  — 

"  I  am  sick  and  weary  of  all  this  business.  I  am  tired 
of  serving  fools.  God  help  tny  country !  He  alone  can 
save  it." •• 

Needless  to  add,  when  our  country  was  saved,  the  writer 
of  those  letters  had  no  hand  in  the  operation.  Saviours  of 
nations  are  made  of  different  stuff. 

Side  by  side  with  the  General's  unsoldierlike,  almost 
childish  railings  to  Mrs.  McClellan  against  the  govern- 
ment must  be  considered  his  official  despatches.  If  less 
violent  than  his  private  messages,  they  still  evince  a  spirit 
of  antagonism,  which  at  times  breaks  through  all  proper 
restraint.  As  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  when  he  came  to 
publish  his  despatches,  was  righted  in  the  good  opinion 
of  those  who  had  misjudged  him,  it  may  be  said  reversely 
of  the  American  commander  that  a  similar  publication  on 
his  part  has  caused  him  to  fall  in  the  estimation  of  many 
war-time  admirers.  To  judge  by  a  few  of  McCIellan's 
military  communications,  he  fancied  himself  and  Lincoln 
to  be  playing  some  sort  of  a  game,  with  men  for  the  count- 
ers and  personal  glory  for  the  stakes.  It  seems  as  if  the 
General  accused  the  administration  of  cheating  over  the 
count,  and  as  if  his  incessant  calls  for  more  troops  must 
be  satisfied  or  there  would  be  an  end  of  the  whole  affair, 
with  the  President  overwhelmed  beneath  a  carefully  fixed 
responsibility  for  the  failure.  McCIellan's  pet  delusion, 
moreover,  that  the  enemy  outnumbered  him  two  to  one, 
apparently  accompanied  him  throughout  the  campaign. 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         383 

After  repeating  this  belief,  at  some  length,  in  a  letter  to 
Mr.  Lincoln  from  Cumberland,  he  wrote :  — 

"  I  most  respectfully  and  earnestly  urge  upon  your  ex- 
cellency that  the  opportunity  has  come  for  striking  a  fatal 
blow  at  the  enemies  of  the  Constitution,  and  I  beg  that 
you  will  cause  this  army  to  be  reinforced  without  delay 
by  all  the  disposable  troops  of  the  government.  I  ask  for 
every  man  that  the  War  Department  can  send  me." "" 

In  rather  a  sharper  vein,  on  the  day  after  the  battle  of 
Hanover  Court  House,  he  telegraphed  to  the  War  Depart- 
ment :  — 

"  It  is  the  policy  and  duty  of  the  government  to  send 
me  by  water  all  the  well-drilled  troops  available.  I  am 
confident  that  Washington  is  in  no  danger.  ...  It  can- 
not be  ignored  that  a  desperate  battle  is  before  us;  if 
any  regiments  of  good  troops  remain  unemployed,  it  will 
be  an  irreparable  fault  committed."  " 

Another  despatch,  sent  at  about  the  same  time,  read:  — 

"  The  enemy  are  even  in  greater  force  than  I  had  sup- 
posed. I  will  do  all  that  quick  movements  can  accomplish, 
but  you  must  send  me  all  the  troops  you  can,  and  leave 
to  me  full  latitude  as  to  choice  of  commanders."  " 

McClellan's  insistence  upon  absolute  authority  in  the 
field  was  theoretically  correct.  His  disobedience,  however, 
of  the  President's  directions  concerning  the  safety  of 
Washington  had  seriously  impaired  the  General's  title 
to  untrammeled  command  over  one  particular  column,  at 
least.  When  McDowell  finally  advanced  overland'  to  co- 
operate with  him,  Mr.  Lincoln  especially  stipulated  that 
the  junior  officer  should,  retain  control  of  all  his  troops, 
and  that  he  should  receive  from  the  General  command- 
ing no  orders  which  would  place  him  out  of  position  to 
cover  the  Capital.  Nevertheless,  as  these  reinforcements 
approached,  McClellan  telegraphed  to  the  Secretary  of 
War:  — 

"  It  ought  to  be  distinctly  understood  that  McDowell 
and  his  troops  are  completely  under  my  control.  I  received 


384       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

a  telegram  from  him  requesting  that  McCall's  division 
might  be  placed  so  as  to  join  him  immediately  on  his 
arrival. 

"That  request  does  not  breathe  the  proper  spirit. 
Whatever  troops  come  to  me  must  be  disposed  of  so  as  to 
do  the  most  good.  I  do  not  feel  that,  in  such  circum- 
stances as  those  in  which  I  am  now  placed,  General 
McDowell  should  wish  the  general  interests  to  be  sacri- 
ficed for  the  purpose  of  increasing  his  command. 

"  If  I  cannot  fully  control  all  his  troops,  I  want  none  of 
them,  but  would  prefer  to  fight  the  battle  with  what  I 
have,  and  let  others  be  responsible  for  the  results."  10° 

This  ultimatum  apparently  received  no  attention.  And 
as  McDowell  was  again  recalled,  at  the  eleventh  hour,  to 
the  defence  of  Washington,  the  question  raised  by  McClel- 
lan  never  came  to  an  issue.  Some  time  later,  on  the  eve 
of  his  Seven  Days'  Retreat,  the  "  Young  Napoleon,"  still 
hedging  against  failure,  telegraphed  to  Stanton :  — 

"  The  rebel  force  is  stated  at  200,000,  including  Jack- 
son and  Beauregard.  I  shall  have  to  contend  against 
vastly  superior  odds,  if  these  reports  be  true.  But  this 
army  will  do  all  in  the  power  of  men  to  hold  their  posi- 
tion and  repulse  any  attack. 

"  I  regret  my  great  inferiority  in  numbers,  but  feel  that 
I  am  in  no  way  responsible  for  it,  as  I  have  not  failed 
to  represent  repeatedly  the  necessity  of  reinforcements ; 
that  this  was  the  decisive  point,  and  that  all  the  available 
meanS  of  the  government  should  be  concentrated  here.  I 
will  do  all  that  a  general  can  do  with  the  splendid  army 
I  have  the  honor  to  command,  and,  if  it  is  destroyed 
by  overwhelming  numbers,  can  at  least  die  with  it  and 
share  its  fate. 

"  But  if  the  result  of  the  action,  which  will  probably 
occur  to-morrow  or  within  a  short  time,  is  a  disaster,  the 
responsibility  cannot  be  thrown  on  my  shoulders ;  it  must 
rest  where  it  belongs."  101 

The  President's  reply  was  a  trifle  firmer,  though  not 


THE   YOUNG   NAPOLEON         385 

less  kind  than  previous  messages  with  which  he  had  sought 
to  encourage  this  weak-kneed  campaigner.  Your  despatch, 
he  wrote,  "  suggesting  the  probability  of  your  being  over- 
whelmed by  200,000,  and  talking  of  where  the  responsi- 
bility will  belong,  pains  me  very  much.  I  give  you  all  I 
can,  and  acton  the  presumption  that  you  will  do  the  best 
you  can  witk  what  you  have ;  while  you  continue  ungen- 
erously, I  think,  to  assume  that  I  could  give  you  more  if 
I  would.  I  have  omitted  and  shall  omit  no  opportunity 
to  send  you  reinforcements  whenever  I  possibly  can." 102 

But  such  assurances  were  in  vain.  Neither  fair  words 
nor  additional  troops  —  the  administration  had  responded 
from  time  to  time  with  both  —  served  to  mollify  McClel- 
lan's  rancor.  On  the  contrary,  they  seemed  to  act  merely 
as  water  upon  his  mill,  for  he  went  right  on  grinding  out 
more  complaints. 

Amidst  the  bloodshed  and  disaster  of  the  "Seven 
Days"  that  followed,  the  General's  truculence,  as  has 
been  set  forth  in  a  previous  chapter,  reached  its  shrillest 
note.  At  midnight,  after  the  defeat  of  Gaines's  Mill,  he 
despatched  a  report  of  the  battle  to  Secretary  Stanton. 
Judging  him  by  this  production,  we  should  say  in  passing, 
that  McClellan,  whatever  may  have  been  his  habitual 
bravery,  was  not  then  eminently  endowed  with  12  P.  M, 
courage.  The  message  closed  with  these  extraordinary 
lines :  — 

"  In  addition  to  what  I  have  already  said,  I  only  wish 
to  say  to  the  President  that  I  think  he  is  wrong  in  regard- 
ing me  as  ungenerous  when  I  said  that  my  force  was  too 
weak.  I  merely  intimated  a  truth  which  to-day  has  been 
too  plainly  proved.  If,  at  this  instant,  I  could  dispose  of 
ten  thousand  (10,000)  fresh  men,  I  could  gain  the  victory 
to-morrow. 

"  I  know  that  a  few  thousand  more  men  would  have 
changed  this  battle  from  a  defeat  to  a  victory.  As  it  is, 
the  government  must  not  and  cannot  hold  me  responsible 
for  the  result. 


3 86       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

"  I  feel  too  earnestly  to-night.  I  have  seen  too  many 
dead  and  wounded  comrades  to  feel  otherwise  than  that 
the  government  has  not  sustained  this  army.  If  you  do 
not  do  so  now,  the  game  is  lost. 

"  If  I  save  this  army  now,  I  tell  you  plainly  that  I  owe 
no  thanks  to  you  or  to  any  other  persons  in  Washington. 

"  You  have  done  your  best  to  sacrifice  this'army."  103 

Insubordination  could  go  no  further.  It  may  be  doubted 
whether  any  general  ever  before  sent  from  stricken  field 
such  a  message  to  his  government.  Even  after  making 
due  allowance  for  the  terrible  strain  under  which  McClel- 
lan  must  have  labored  when  he  wrote  the  despatch,  such 
insolence  seems  unpardonable.  Though  directed  at  Stan- 
ton,  the  stroke  was  manifestly  meant  for  Lincoln  as  well, 
with  an  eye,  perhaps,  to  its  effect  upon  the  onlooking 
public  in  the  background.104  How  the  blow  was  softened 
as  it  passed  through  the  War  Department  telegraph  office 
has  already  been  told.  Yet  enough  of  the  message,  as  we 
have  seen,  reached  the  General's  superiors  to  carry  home 
his  accusation  that  they  had  failed  to  sustain  the  army, 
and  were  responsible  for  its  defeat.  Any  other  President 
would  probably  have  made  short  work  of  the  insult ;  but 
Lincoln  here,  as  elsewhere,  was  incapable  of  turning  into 
a  personal  affair  what  vitally  concerned  the  welfare  of 
the  nation.  His  self-surrender  appears  to  have  been  as 
complete  in  the  one  direction  as  was  McClellan's  egotism 
in  the  other.  The  President's  anxious  thoughts  were  fixed 
upon  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  not  upon  its  General  or 
himself.  For  between  the  lines  of  this  wild  denunciation 
he  read  panic  and  disaster.  It  appeared  to  him  that 
nothing  but  the  imminent  danger  of  losing  the  whole 
army  —  and  such  a  catastrophe  had  lately  been  more  than 
hinted  at  —  would  account  for  McClellan's  bitter  words. 
Overlooking  them  entirely,  Lincoln  put  all  his  heart  into 
this  reply,  which  was  speedily  placed  on  the  wire :  — 

"  Save  your  army,  at  all  events.  WTill  send  reinforce- 
ments as  fast  as  we  can.  Of  course  they  cannot  reach 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         387 

you  to-day,  to-morrow,  or  next  day.  I  have  not  said  you 
were  ungenerous  for  saying  you  needed  reinforcements. 
I  thought  you  were  ungenerous  in  assuming  that  I  did 
not  send  them  as  fast  as  I  could.  I  feel  any  misfortune  to 
you  and  your  army  quite  as  keenly  as  you  feel  it  yourself. 
If  you  have  had  a  drawn  battle,  or  a  repulse,  it  is  the  price 
we  pay  for  the  enemy  not  being  in  Washington.  We  pro- 
tected Washington,  and  the  enemy  concentrated  on  you. 
Had  we  stripped  Washington,  he  would  have  been  upon 
us  before  the  troops  could  have  gotten  to  you.  Less  than 
a  week  ago  you  notified  us  that  reinforcements  were  leav- 
ing Richmond  to  come  in  front  of  us.  It  is  the  nature  of 
the  case,  and  neither  you  nor  the  government  is  to  blame. 
Please  tell  at  once  the  present  condition  and  aspect  of 
things."  105 

Before  McClellan  could  relieve  the  President's  anxiety, 
his  communications  were  cut,  and  the  Army  of  the  Poto- 
mac was  again  fighting  its  way  to  a  safe  haven  at  Harri. 
son's  Landing.  Here  the  Peninsular  campaign  presently 
came  to  an  end,  one  of  the  costliest  failures  of  the  war. 

On  what  ground,  if  any,  could  this  lack  of  success  be 
charged  against  the  administration?  Was  it  true  that 
Lincoln  and  his  advisers  were  jealous  of  McClellan,  and 
conspired  to  destroy  him,  together  with  his  army,  by 
withholding  reinforcements?  Of  the  General's  disfavor 
in  certain  governmental  quarters,  there  can  be  no  doubt. 
Before  the  opening  of  the  Peninsular  campaign  he  had 
lost  standing,  as  we  have  seen,  with  many  of  the  strong 
men  by  whom  the  President  was  surrounded.  But  we 
have  also  seen  how  loyally  Lincoln  stood  by  the  com- 
mander of  his  choice  against  all  comers ;  how  he  sup- 
ported him,  moreover,  with  "good  measure,  pressed  down, 
and  shaken  together,  and  running  over,"  through  the  de- 
lays and  disappointments  of  the  winter.  Taking  sides 
with  neither  McClellanites  nor  anti-McClellanites,  —  for 
unhappily  this  had  become  a  matter  of  factions,  —  the 
President  viewed  every  question  as  it  arose,  with  an  eye 


388       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

single  to  the  preservation  of  the  Union.  Even  the  appeal 
to  Caesar  that  the  General's  military  fame  would  become 
a  menace  to  his  superior's  tenure  of  office  had  failed  in 
its  purpose.  When  one  of  Lincoln's  friends  warned  him 
of  McClellan's  reputed  ambition  to  reach  the  White 
House,  the  President  answered :  — 

"  I  am  perfectly  willing,  if  he  will  only  put  an  end  to 
this  war."  m 

That,  however,  is  just  what  the  General's  opponents 
believed  him  incapable  of  doing.  Their  distrust  of  him, 
need  we  add,  was  deepened  by  his  deliberate  attempt  to 
carry  off  down  the  Chesapeake  troops  which,  under  the 
Chief  Magistrate's  orders,  should  have  been  left  to  guard 
Washington.  Nevertheless,  McClellan's  claim  that  these 
leaders  tried  to  compass  his  defeat  on  the  Peninsula  is 
as  absurd  as  it  is  unfounded.  Such  treason  could  have 
been  accomplished  through  only  one  of  two  men  in  the 
government  —  Lincoln  or  Stan  ton. 

The  Secretary  of  War,  despite  his  occasional  outbursts 
of  indignation  over  the  General's  course,  gave  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac,  as  far  as  the  records  show,  conscientious 
support ; 107  and  the  discussions  on  this  subject  that  have 
outlived  the  war  furnish  no  substantial  proofs  to  the  con- 
trary. While  recriminations  were  at  their  height,  more- 
over, during  the  summer  of  1862,  a  calm,  straightforward 
statement  made  by  Mr.  Lincoln,  at  a  public  meeting, 
obviously  placed  the  matter  in  its  proper  light. 

"  There  has  been  a  very  widespread  attempt,"  said  he, 
"  to  have  a  quarrel  between  General  McClellan  and  the 
Secretary  of  War.  Now,  I  occupy  a  position  that  enables 
me  to  observe  that  these  two  gentlemen  are  not  nearly  so 
deep  in  the  quarrel  as  some  pretending  to  be  their  friends. 
General  McClellan's  attitude  is  such  that,  in  the  very 
selfishness  of  his  nature,  he  cannot  but  wish  to  be  success- 
ful, and  I  hope  he  will ;  and  the  Secretary  of  War  is  in 
precisely  the  same  situation.  If  the  military  commanders 
in  the  field  cannot  be  successful,  not  only  the  Secretary  of 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         389 

War,  but  myself  —  for  the  time  being  the  master  of  them 
both  —  cannot  but  be  failures.  I  know  General  McClellaa 
wishes  to  be  successful,  and  I  know  he  does  not  wish  it 
any  more  than  the  Secretary  of  War  for  him,  and  both 
of  them  together  no  more  than  I  wish  it.  Sometimes  we 
have  a  dispute  about  how  many  men  General  McClellan 
has  had,  and  those  who  would  disparage  him  say  that  he 
has  had  a  very  large  number,  and  those  who  would  dis- 
parage the  Secretary  of  War  insist  that  General  McClel- 
lan has  had  a  very  small  number.  The  basis  for  this  is, 
there  is  always  a  wide  difference,  and  on  this  occasion 
perhaps  a  wider  one  than  usual,  between  the  grand  total 
on  McClellan's  rolls  and  the  men  actually  fit  for  duty ; 
and  those  who  would  disparage  him  talk  of  the  grand 
total  on  paper,  and  those  who  would  disparage  the  Secre- 
tary of  War  talk  of  those  at  present  fit  for  duty.  General 
McClellan  has  sometimes  asked  for  things  that  the  Secre- 
tary of  War  did  not  give  him.  General  McClellan  is  not 
to  blame  for  asking  for  what  he  wanted  and  needed,  and 
the  Secretary  of  War  is  not  to  blame  for  not  giving  when 
he  had  none  to  give.  And  I  say  here,  as  far  as  I  know, 
the  Secretary  of  War  has  withheld  no  one  thing  at  any 
time  in  my  power  to  give  him.  I  have  no  accusation 
against  him.  I  believe  he  is  a  brave  and  able  man,  and 
I  stand  here,  as  justice  requires  me  to  do,  to  take  upon 
myself  what  has  been  charged  on  the  Secretary  of  War, 
as  withholding  from  him."  m 

This  narrows  the  question  down,  and  properly  so,  to 
how  the  President  treated  McClellan  on  the  Peninsula. 

The  army  of  invasion,  according  to  the  original  esti- 
mate of  its  commander,  was  to  comprise  "  from  110,000 
to  140,000  "  troops.  War  Department  returns  show  that 
121,500  men  were  transported,  at  the  outset,  to  Fortress 
Monroe.  McClellan  may  consequently  be  said  to  have 
started  on  his  campaign  with  an  effective  force  equal  at 
least  to  the  minimum  number  that  he  had  required.  Not- 
withstanding this,  Lincoln  strained  every  effort,  from 


390      LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF  MEN 

beginning  to  end,  in  his  anxiety  to  satisfy  the  General's 
strident  calls  for  more.  When  McClellan,  a  few  days 
after  his  arrival  on  the  Peninsula,  despatched  that  he 
would  hold  himself  "  responsible  for  the  results  "  of  the 
campaign,  if  he  could  have  Franklin's  division,  the  12,000 
men  constituting  that  splendid  body  were  immediately 
forwarded.  They  failed,  as  we  know,  to  be  utilized  in 
time ;  but  the  President  was  not  deterred  by  the  disap- 
pointment from  meeting  further  demands,  to  the  best  of 
his  ability.  In  fact,  his  cooperation  later  drew  from  the 
insatiable  General  this  acknowledgment :  — 

"  I  am  glad  to  learn  that  you  are  pressing  forward  re- 
inforcements so  vigorously.  I  shall  be  in  perfect  readiness 
to  move  forward  and  take  Richmond  the  moment  McCall 
reaches  here  and  the  ground  will  admit  the  passage  of 
artillery."  1W 

McCall's  10,000  men  duly  arrived.  McClellan's  pro- 
mises, however,  as  in  the  case  of  Franklin,  went  by  default. 
He  now  wanted  the  rest  of  McDowell's  detained  corps, 
from  which  these  two  divisions  had  been  detached.  That 
command,  after  starting  several  times  to  join  him,  was 
each  time  recalled  to  the  defence  of  the  Capital.  It 
never  reached  McClellan,  and  finally  participated,  despite 
McDowell's  own  earnest  protests,  in  the  government's 
faulty  tactics  against  Jackson  in  the  Shenandoah  valley.110 
Other  reinforcements  had,  however,  been  sent  to  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac,  so  that  by  the  middle  of  June,  over  39,000 
men  were,  according  to  McClellan's  own  official  returns, 
added  to  his  original  force.  In  brief,  as  may  be  seen  at  a 
glance  over  the  figures,  there  were  enough  Union  troops, 
from  first  to  last,  on  the  Peninsula,  to  take  Richmond. 

At  every  point  throughout  the  campaign  the  northern 
forces  outnumbered  —  and  at  times  heavily  so  —  their 
southern  foes ;  but  McClellan  failed  to  bring  his  entire 
strength  into  action.  He  fought  battle  after  battle  with 
inferior  numbers,  while  unemployed  divisions  stood  idle 
within  striking  distance.  The  conclusion  is  inevitable. 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         391 

This  commander,  who  kept  the  wires  hot  with  demands 
for  reinforcements,  and  accused  the  administration  of 
treason  because  he  did  not  get  as  many  as  he  wanted,  had 
more  men  than  he  knew  how  to  use.  Napoleon's  opinion 
that  the  Archduke  Charles  and  he,  himself,  were  the  only 
men  of  his  day  who  could  maneuver  one  hundred  thousand 
troops,  would  evidently  not  have  been  modified  in  favor  of 
his  American  namesake.  McClellan's  errors  under  this 
head,  however,  were  more  than  once  redeemed  by  the  con- 
duct of  the  army,  which  he  had  so  effectively  disciplined. 
Officers  and  men  fought  their  way  from  Williamsburg  to 
Malvern  Hill  like  heroes.  The  story  of  the  Peninsidar 
campaign,  which,  by  the  way,  it  does  not  lie  within  the 
scope  of  this  work  to  tell,  abounds  in  brilliant  exploits. 
Twice,  perhaps  three  times,  the  Confederate  Capital 
seemed  within  the  Union  grasp.  A  Grant,  a  Sherman,  a 
Thomas,  or  a  Hooker  would  have  marched  into  Richmond ; 
but  the  talented  McClellan,  without  initiative  or  dash  in 
the  field,  retreated  from  his  victories.  Through  the  cloud 
of  controversy,  in  which  he  and  his  friends  have  tried 
to  envelop  these  operations,  looms  the  rigid  truth  that 
McClellan  was  again  outgeneraled.  What  lions  he  had 
to  slay  were  not  in  far-away  Washington.  They  blocked 
his  path  right  on  the  Peninsula,  in  the  shape  successively 
of  three  able  Confederate  commanders  —  J.  Bankhead 
Magruder,  Joseph  E.  Johnston,  and  Robert  E.  Lee. 

McClellan's  attempt  to  shift  the  blame  for  his  failure 
upon  Stanton,  Chase,  and  the  rest  was  bad  enough  — 
to  hint,  even,  that  the  President  desired  his  defeat  was 
monstrous.  Any  formal  refutation  of  such  a  charge  would 
almost  seem  insulting  to  the  memory  of  the  most  magnan- 
imous public  man  of  his  time.  Yet  this  topic  should  not 
be  dismissed  without  reference,  at  least,  to  Lincoln's  ear- 
nest interest  in  the  campaign.  His  yearning  for  success 
on  the  Peninsula  was  pathetic.  Moving,  like  the  central 
figure  of  some  old  Greek  tragedy,  through  the  shadow  of 
successive  misfortunes,  he  seems  to  have  entered  into  every 


392       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

conflict,  though  he  could  not  be  actually  seen  to  take  part 
in  any.  And  at  the  close  of  these  three  harrowing  months, 
as  the  action  reaches  its  climax,  we  find  him  in  an  agony 
of  disappointment,  second  not  even  to  that  of  McClellan, 
himself.  "When  the  Peninsula  campaign  terminated 
suddenly  at  Harrison's  Landing,"  said  the  President  to  a 
friend,  "  I  was  as  nearly  inconsolable  as  I  could  be  and 
live." m  Indeed,  only  one  whose  soul  was  bound  up  in 
the  hope  that  McClellan  might  win,  would  have  sent  the 
General  such  messages,  or  have  suffered  such  answers,  as 
passed  between  them.  A  father  advising,  chiding,  encour- 
aging, by  turns,  a  wilful  sou  could  not  have  treated  this 
rasping  officer  with  more  uniform  indulgence.  We  rise 
from  a  reading  of  their  correspondence  with  a  nicer  per- 
ception of  the  President's  nobility  of  character  —  a  keener 
admiration  than  ever  of  his  rugged  strength.  Strong 
enough  to  hold  McClellan  where  he  had  put  him,  in  the 
teeth  of  perhaps  as  powerful  an  opposition  as  has  ever 
been  massed  against  a  commander ;  strong  enough  to 
ignore  the  signs  which  foreshadowed  McClellan's  political 
rivalry ;  and  strong,  above  all,  in  the  perfect  self-control 
with  which  he  met  McClellan's  unmerited  reproaches, 
Lincoln  manifested,  throughout  this  trying  period,  how 
high  he  deserves  to  rank  among  the  masters  of  men. 

With  the  arrival  of  the  army  at  Harrison's  Landing, 
fresh  perplexities  beset  the  President.  He  was  not  ready 
yet  to  give  up  its  commander,  though  that  officer  had 
hardly  a  friend  left  at  court.  Stirred  by  the  fruitless 
sacrifices  of  the  campaign,  McClellan's  opponents  now  re- 
doubled their  efforts  to  bring  about  his  removal.  In  their 
prejudiced  eyes,  the  embattled  march  to  the  James  River, 
which  he  had  described  as  a  change  of  base,  was  a  retreat, 
pure  and  simple.  Whatever  the  movement  may  be  called, 
—  it  partook,  in  fact,  of  the  nature  of  both,  —  Lincoln 
recognized  how  skilful  had  been  those  defensive  oper- 
ations on  the  way,  that  finally  saved  the  army  from  de- 
struction. Hence  there  were  no  reproaches  from  the  White 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         393 

House  for  the  unsuccessful  General.  When  he  announced, 
on  the  2d  of  July,  that  his  entire  force  had  reached  the 
protection  of  the  gunboats,  the  President,  haggard  with 
suspense,  telegraphed :  — 

"  I  am  satisfied  that  yourself,  officers,  and  men  have 
done  the  best  you  could.  All  accounts  say  better  fighting 
was  never  done.  Ten  thousand  thanks  for  it."  112 

As  if  not  content  with  this  praise,  which  McClellan 
himself,  by  the  way,  termed  "  kind,"  the  General  entered 
a  special  plea  for  more,  after  the  following  fashion  :  — 

"  Never  did  such  a  change  of  base,  involving  a  retro- 
grade movement,  and  under  incessant  attacks  from  a  most 
determined  and  vastly  more  numerous  foe,  partake  so  little 
of  disorder.  .  .  .  When  all  the  circumstances  of  the  case 
are  known,  it  will  be  acknowledged  by  all  competent 
judges,  that  the  movement  just  completed  by  this  army 
is  unparalleled  in  the  annals  of  war.  Under  the  most 
difficult  circumstances,  we  have  preserved  our  trains,  our 
guns,  our  material,  and,  above  all,  our  honor."  113 

To  which  Mr.  Lincoln  promptly  responded :  — 

"  Be  assured,  the  heroism  and  skill  of  yourself,  officers, 
and  men,  is  and  forever  will  be  appreciated.  If  you  can 
hold  your  present  position,  we  shall  hive  the  enemy 
yet."  1U 

But  to  "  hive  the  enemy,"  which  had  driven  the  Grand 
Army  of  the  Potomac  to  cover,  required,  McClellan  as- 
serted, heavy  reinforcements.  "I  need  50,000  more  men," 
he  had  telegraphed  the  day  before  his  arrival  at  Harri- 
son's Landing,  "  and  with  them  I  will  retrieve  our  for- 
tunes." 1U 

To  which  the  President  had  made  one  of  his  character- 
istic replies.  "  Your  despatch  of  Tuesday  morning,"  it  read, 
"  induces  me  to  hope  your  army  is  having  some  rest.  In. 
this  hope  allow  me  to  reason  with  you  a  moment.  When 
you  ask  for  50,000  men  to  be  promptly  sent  you,  you  surely 
labor  under  some  gross  mistake  of  fact.  Recently  you  sent 
papers  showing  your  disposal  of  forces  made  last  spring 


394      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

for  the  defence  of  Washington  and  advising  a  return  to 
that  plan.  I  find  it  included  in  and  about  Washington 
75,000  men.  Now,  please  be  assured  I  have  not  men 
enough  to  fill  that  very  plan  by  15,000.  All  of  Fremont's 
in  the  valley,  all  of  Banks's,  all  of  McDowell's  not  with 
you,  and  all  in  Washington,  taken  together,  do  not  ex- 
ceed, if  they  reach,  60,000.  With  Wool  and  Dix  added  to 
those  mentioned,  I  have  not,  outside  of  your  army,  75,000 
men  east  of  the  mountains.  Thus  the  idea  of  sending  you 
50,000,  or  any  other  considerable  force,  promptly,  is  sim- 
ply absurd.  If,  in  your  frequent  mention  of  responsibility, 
you  have  the  impression  that  I  blame  you  for  not  doing 
more  than  you  can,  please  be  relieved  of  such  impression. 
I  only  beg  that  in  like  manner  you  will  not  ask  impossi- 
bilities of  me.  If  you  think  you  are  not  strong  enough  to 
take  Richmond  just  now,  I  do  not  ask  you  to  try  just  now. 
Save  the  army,  material  and  personal,  and  I  will  strengthen 
it  for  the  offensive  again  as  fast  as  I  can.  The  Governors 
of  eighteen  States  offer  me  a  new  levy  of  300,000,  which 
I  accept."  118  There  can  be  no  doubt  of  Lincoln's  inten- 
tion, when  this  letter  was  written,  to  support  McClellan 
in  an  early  resumption  of  his  campaign. 

From  every  available  source,  meanwhile,  from  Hunter 
at  Hilton  Head,  Burnside  at  New  Berne,  Halleck  at 
Corinth,  and  certain  commands  around  Washington,  de- 
tachments were  ordered  to  the  Peninsula.  Most  of  these, 
it  should  be  said,  for  one  reason  or  another,  never  reached 
McClellan.  Yet  had  they  all  come,  his  appetite  would 
probably  still  have  remained  unappeased.  In  less  than 
three  days  from  the  time  of  that  promise  to  "  retrieve  our 
fortunes  "  with  "  50,000  more  men,"  he  wrote  :  — 

"  To  accomplish  the  great  task  of  capturing  Richmond 
and  putting  an  end  to  this  rebellion  reinforcements  should 
be  sent  to  me  rather  much  over  than  much  less  than 
100,000  men."  117 

The  difference  in  these  figures  puzzled  Mr.  Lincoln,  as 
did  the  more  startling  statement,  in  the  same  despatch :  — ' 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         395 

"  It  is  of  course  impossible  to  estimate  as  yet  our  losses, 
but  I  doubt  whether  there  are  to-day  more  than  50,000 
men  with  their  colors." 

That  the  army  had  shrunk  to  anything  like  the  extent 
thus  indicated  was  inconceivable  to  the  President.  He 
could  not  hope  to  learn  the  facts,  however,  from  McClel- 
lan's  inconsistent  messages ;  nor  was  he  disposed,  in  view 
of  the  partisan  feelings  that  had  been  aroused,  to  rely  on 
the  reports  of  others.  There  appeared  to  be  no  alterna- 
tive for  him  but  to  judge  of  the  situation  at  Harrison's 
Landing  with  his  own  eyes.  So,  on  the  8th  of  July,  Lin- 
coln paid  McClellan  a  visit. 

The  President  stayed  less  than  twenty-four  hours,  but 
he  spent  the  time  to  advantage.  A  hasty  inspection  of 
the  army,  and  conferences  with  its  principal  officers,  suffi- 
ciently revealed  the  condition  of  affairs.  McClellan's 
50,000  men  had  unaccountably  become  86,500.118  The 
days  of  miracle-workers  were  past,  so  no  one  suggested 
that  he  had,  like  the  King  of  the  Myrmidons,  recruited 
his  ranks  overnight  from  among  certain  insects,  which 
plagued  the  camp  on  the  banks  of  the  James.  But  what 
troubled  Lincoln  more  than  this  discrepancy  between  the 
commander's  understated  figures  and  his  actual  strength 
was  the  large  number  of  soldiers,  a  host  in  itself,  still 
missing  from  the  ranks.  "  Sending  men  to  that  army," 
he  once  j?aid,  "is  like  shoveling  fleas  across  a  barn-yard 
—  not  half  of  them  get  there."119  And  shortly  after  this 
visit,  the  President,  with  official  returns  before  him,  thus 
summed  up  his  conclusions  on  the  subject,  in  a  despatch 
to  McClellan :  — 

"  I  am  told  that  over  160,000  men  have  gone  into  your 
army  on  the  Peninsula.  When  I  was  with  you  the  other 
day,  we  made  out  86,500  remaining,  leaving  73,500  to  be 
accounted  for.  I  believe  23.500  will  cover  all  the  killed, 
wounded,  and  missing  in  all  your  battles  and  skirmishes, 
leaving  50,000  who  have  left  otherwise.  Not  more  than 
5,000  of  these  have  died,  leaving  45,000  of  your  army 


396       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

still  alive  and  not  with  it.  I  believe  half  or  two  thirds  of 
them  are  fit  for  duty  to-day.  Have  you  any  more  perfect 
knowledge  of  this  than  I  have  ?  If  I  am  right,  and  you 
had  these  men  with  you,  you  could  go  into  Richmond  in 
the  next  three  days.  How  can  they  be  got  to  you,  and 
how  can  they  be  prevented  from  getting  away  in  such 
numbers  for  the  future  ?  "  12° 

McClellan's  reply  was  hardly  satisfactory.  He  felt  con- 
fident, he  said,  that  so  many  men  had  not  reached  him  ; 
but  he  admitted  that  there  were  40,000  absentees,  over 
34,000  of  whom  were  absent  by  authority.  His  explana- 
tion of  how  this  surprising  number  got  away  on  leave, 
during  the  very  period  in  which  he  clamored  most  des- 
perately for  additional  troops,  was  far  from  adequate.121 
Nor  did  Mr.  Lincoln  take  much  comfort  in  the  admission, 
"  If  I  could  receive  back  the  absentees  and  could  get  my 
sick  men  up,  I  would  need  but  small  reinforcements  to 
enable  me  to  take  Richmond."  m  Unfortunately,  "  ifs  " 
capture  no  citadels.  So  we  presently  find  McClellan  tele- 
graphing to  the  President,  as  of  old,  "It  appears  mani- 
festly to  be  our  policy  to  concentrate  here  everything  we 
can  possibly  spare  from  less  important  points,"123  etc.,  etc. 
And  thus  his  dreary  nagging  continued  to  the  end  of  the 
story ;  but  we  look  in  vain,  at  about  this  juncture,  for 
more  of  Lincoln's  soothing  answers.  That  they  ceased 
after  his  return  from  Harrison's  Landing  is  significant. 

During  this  visit,  brief  as  it  was,  the  President  had 
learned  several  things  besides  the  real  size  of  the  army. 
Not  the  least  of  these  was  the  size  of  McClellan's  self- 
esteem.  That  officer,  several  weeks  before,  while  in  the 
midst  of  the  Peninsular  campaign,  when  every  thought 
should  have  been  fixed  on  the  task  before  him,  had  tele- 
graphed to  Mr.  Lincoln  for  permission  to  submit  his 
"  views  as  to  the  present  state  of  military  affairs  through- 
out the  whole  country,"  requesting,  at  the  same  time, 
detailed  information  about  the  troops  not  under  his 
orders.124  The  President  had  replied :  — 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         397 

"If  it  would  not  divert  too  much  of  your  time  and 
attention  from  the  army  under  your  immediate  command, 
I  would  be  glad  to  have  your  views  as  to  the  present 
state  of  military  affairs  throughout  the  whole  country,  as 
you  say  you  would  be  glad  to  give  them.  I  would  rather 
it  should  be  by  letter  than  by  telegraph,  because  of  the 
better  chance  of  secrecy.  As  to  the  numbers  and  positions 
of  the  troops  not  under  your  command  in  Virginia  and 
elsewhere,  even  if  I  could  do  it  with  accuracy,  which  I 
cannot,  I  would  rather  not  transmit  either  by  telegraph  or 
letter,  because  of  the  chances  of  its  reaching  the  enemy. 
I  would  be  very  glad  to  talk  with  you,  but  you  cannot 
leave  your  camp,  and  I  cannot  well  leave  here." 125 

The  reproof  was  too  delicately  hinted.  McClellan  de- 
ferred the  execution  of  his  purpose,  but  he  did  not  give 
it  up.  As  soon  as  Mr.  Lincoln  arrived  at  Harrison's 
Landing,  the  General  hastened  on  board  the  steamer  to 
receive  him.  When  they  had  been  together  in  the  cabin 
for  a  short  time,  McClellan  handed  the  President  a  letter. 
Having  read  it  through,  Lincoln,  with  some  such  expres- 
sion as  "  All  right,"  put  the  document  into  his  pocket,  and 
made  no  reference  to  it  during  the  rest  of  his  visit. 

This,  reticence  is  not  to  be  wondered  at.  In  that  letter 
a  defeated  commander  tried  to  impose  upon  his  President 
an  entire  system  of  civil,  as  well  as  military,  doctrine. 
Assuming,  after  the  manner  of  Mr.  Seward,  in  a  no  less 
remarkable  communication,  that  Lincoln  lacked  a  policy, 
McClellan  undertook  to  supply  him  with  one,  "cover- 
ing the  whole  ground  of  our  national  trouble."  A  large 
contract,  to  be  sure,  for  a  soldier  whose  strategy  had  just 
ended  in  a  pitiable  failure,  and  whose  neglect  of  things  po- 
litical, all  his  life,  had  usually  kept  him  from  performing 
even  the  simplest  duties  of  citizenship.  Yet  McClellan 
seems  to  have  appreciated,  at  least,  the  rhetorical  demands 
of  the  situation.  His  letter  is  a  marvel.  The  exordium 
solemnly  pleads  the  privilege  of  speaking  freely,  because 
the  army  under  him  might  be  overwhelmed,  any  moment, 


398       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

by  the  enemy  in  its  front,  though  that  enemy  —  let  us 
whisper  —  was,  at  this  very  time,  turning  back  to  Rich- 
mond. Wherefore  his  conclusion,  as  artfully  calculated 
to  disarm  criticism,  also  becomes  a  mere  flourish  of  lan- 
guage. "I  may  be  on  the  brink  of  eternity,"  it  reads, 
"  and  as  I  hope  for  forgiveness  from  my  Maker,  I  have 
written  this  letter  with  sincerity  towards  you,  and  from 
love  for  my  country."  The  body  of  the  lecture  —  for  that 
in  fact  it  is — tells  the  President  what  he  must  do  to 
save  the  Union ;  while  a  sweeping  criticism  of  what  he 
has  done  is  written  large  between  the  lines.  After  adjur- 
ing Lincoln  never  to  abandon  the  fight,  McClellan  says, 
"  Let  neither  military  disaster,  political  faction,  nor  for- 
eign war  shake  your  settled  purpose  to  enforce  the  equal 
operation  of  the  laws  of  the  United  States  upon  the  people 
of  every  State."  Advising  against  the  subjugation  of  the 
southern  people,  he  urges  that  there  "  should  not  be  at 
all  a  war  upon  population,  but  against  armed  forces  and 
political  organizations.  Neither  confiscation  of  property, 
political  executions  of  persons,  territorial  organization  of 
States,  or  forcible  abolition  of  slavery  should  be  contem- 
plated for  a  moment."  Then  the  President  is  admonished 
that  "  military  arrests  should  not  be  tolerated,  except  in 
places  where  active  hostilities  exist ;  and  oaths  not  re- 
quired by  enactments  —  constitutionally  made  —  should 
be  neither  demanded  nor  received."  Here  follow  some 
confused  suggestions  favoring  compensated  emancipation 
of  slaves,  in  certain  States,  "  upon  grounds  of  military 
necessity,"  tacked  to  the  stipulation  that  "  military  power 
should  not  be  allowed  to  interfere  with  the  relations  of 
servitude."  Unless  these  principles  are  made  known,  he 
adds,  '•  the  effort  to  obtain  requisite  forces  will  be  almost 
hopeless."  But  "  a  declaration  of  radical  views,  especially 
upon  slavery,"  warns  the  oracle,  ''will  rapidly  disintegrate 
our  present  armies."  His  final  piece  of  advice,  still  strik- 
ingly reminiscent  of  the  Seward  memorandum,  reads:  — 
"  In  carrying  out  any  system  of  policy  which  you  may 


THE   YOUNG   NAPOLEON         399 

form,  you  will  require  a  comraander-in-chief  of  the  army, 
— one  who  possesses  your  confidence,  understands  your 
views,  and  who  is  competent  to  execute  your  orders  by 
directing  the  military  forces  of  the  nation  to  the  accom- 
plishment of  the  objects  by  you  proposed.  I  do  not  ask 
that  place  for  myself.  I  am  willing  to  serve  you  in  such 
position  as  you  may  assign  me,  and  I  will  do  so  as  faith- 
fully as  ever  subordinate  served  superior."128 

Had  Julius  Caesar  refused  the  kingly  crown  by  mail, 
he  would  have  employed,  perhaps,  some  such  phraseology. 

The  Harrison's  Landing  letter  was  broader  in  scope, 
to  raise  a  parliamentary  objection,  than  the  petition  on 
which  it  rested  —  so  much  broader,  in  fact,  as  to  be  out 
of  order.  Such  an  utterance  from  a  victorious  general 
would  have  been  inept,  from  a  defeated  one  it  was  imper- 
tinent. "  You  know,"  McClellan  once  wrote  to  his  wife, 
"  that  I  have  a  way  of  attending  to  most  other  things  than 
my  own  affairs,"  and  the  avowal  applies  here  with  par- 
ticular force.  An  adept  in  military  lore,  he  must  have 
recognized,  if  any  one  did,  how  improper  it  was  for  a  gen- 
eral in  the  field  to  meddle  with  purely  political  questions. 
Yet  he  plunged  into  the  mazes  of  this  forbidden  domain, 
foreign  alike  to  his  office  and  his  experience,  under  the 
honest  delusion,  apparently,  that  Lincoln  needed  his  guid- 
ance there.  "  I  have  written  a  strong,  frank  letter  to  the 
President,"  McClellan  informs  the  lady  at  home.  "  If  he 
acts  upon  it,  the  country  will  be  saved."  ^  But  the  silence 
with  which  Mr.  Lincoln  received  his  lesson  kept  the  Gen- 
eral guessing.  "  I  do  not  know,"  he  wrote  her,  after  the 
President's  departure,  "  to  what  extent  he  has  profited  by 
his  visit;  not  much,  I  fear.  I  will  enqlose  with  this  a 
copy  of  a  letter  I  handed  him,  which  I  would  be  glad  to 
have  you  preserve  carefully  as  a  very  important  record." 128 
This  anxiety  about  his  "  record,"  by  the  way,  cropped  out 
so  often  with  McClellan  as  to  give  one  the  impression  of  a 
man  who  was  building  up  a  case.  Indeed,  however  deeply 
he  might  have  been  engrossed  in  saving  the  country,  he 


400       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

never  failed  to  save  the  evidence  by  which  he  expected, 
some  day,  to  prove  how  hard  the  administration  had  made 
the  task  for  him ;  and  of  the  documents  so  cherished  the 
most  important,  beyond  a  question,  was  this  Harrison's 
Landing  letter.  Under  the  form  of  advising  the  Presi- 
dent, it  condemned,  with  peculiar  emphasis,  his  attitude 
toward  the  war;  while  the  whole  spirit  of  the  production, 
as  we  shall  see,  made  its  author,  later,  when  it  became 
public  property,  the  logical  standard-bearer  of  those  vari- 
ous discontented  elements  which  fused  for  the  purpose  of 
defeating  Lincoln's  reelection.  There  is  no  good  reason, 
however,  to  doubt  the  sincerity  of  the  letter.  It  appears 
to  have  correctly  expressed  McClellan's  ultra-conservative 
views.  Nor  are  we  disposed  to  dispute  the  claim  of  his 
editor  that  it  was  composed  without  the  aid  of  the  poli- 
ticians.129 But  how  about  their  influence  in  the  matter? 
The  friendly  overtures  of  prominent  Democrats,  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  hostility  of  Radical  Republicans,  on 
the  other,  must  have  given  McClellan's  mind  a  distinctly 
political  bias.  If  he  did  not  openly  respond  to  proffers 
of  party  leadership,  he  felt  called  upon,  apparently,  to 
declare  himself  concerning  party  questions,  in  a  form 
available  for  future  reference.  At  all  events,  the  writing 
of  the  famous  letter  when  his  military  fortunes  were  on 
the  ebb  looks  decidedly,  whatever  else  may  be  said  on  the 
subject,  like  the  proceeding  which  a  certain  astute  politi- 
cian of  later  distinction  described  in  a  memorable  phrase, 
as  casting  an  anchor  to  windward. 

Of  course  the  President  took  no  public  notice  of  the  sin- 
gular document  which  he  brought  home  in  his  pocket.  So 
far  was  he  from  heeding  the  General's  solemn  warnings 
—  threats,  some  writers  have  called  them  —  that,  within 
eight  days  after  his  return,  Mr.  Lincoln  had  determined 
upon  emancipation,  and  had  signed  the  drastic  Confisca- 
tion Act.130  In  one  particular,  however,  he  seemingly 
adopted  McClellan's  counsel.  The  four  months  that  had 
elapsed  since  the  Chief  Executive  and  his  war  minister 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         401 

undertook  to  handle  the  armies  in  the  field,  without  a  mili- 
tary expert  in  supreme  command,  had  left  the  President, 
at  least,  in  no  doubt  as  to  the  unwisdom  of  the  step.  For 
some  weeks  he  had  contemplated  the  selection  of  ageneral- 
in-chief,  and  almost  immediately  after  the  historic  lesson 
at  Harrison's  Landing,  he  decided  upon  the  man  ;  but  to 
his  mentor's  chagrin,  the  appointment  read,  "  Henry  W. 
Halleck,"  not  "  George  B.  McClellan."  131  How  deep  this 
cut  may  be  inferred  from  one  of  the  little  private  notes 
to  Mrs.  McClellan.  "  You  ask  me,"  it  ran,  "  whether  I 
advised  the  President  to  appoint  Halleck.  The  letter  of 
which  I  sent  you  a  copy  is  all  that  ever  passed  on  the 
subject,  either  directly  or  indirectly  ;  not  another  word 
than  is  there  written.  We  never  conversed  on  the  subject. 
I  was  never  informed  of  his  views  or  intentions,  and  even 
now  have  not  been  officially  informed  of  the  appointment. 
I  only  know  it  through  the  newspapers.  In  all  these 
things  the  President  and  those  around  him  have  acted  so 
as  to  make  the  matter  as  offensive  as  possible."  132  Hardly 
less  agreeable  was  one  of  the  new  Chief's  earliest  duties. 
On  the  day  after  his  arrival  at  Washington,133  Mr.  Lin- 
coln hurried  him  to  the  camp  on  the  Peninsula,  in  order 
that  he  might  determine,  by  personal  observation,  what 
was  best  to  be  done  with  the  Army  of  the  Potomac. 

Halleck  found  McClellan  eager  for  a  new  campaign 
against  Richmond,  along  the  line  of  the  river  on  which 
the  column  rested.  There,  according  to  its  commander,  — 
and  later  events  corroborated  him,  —  "the  fate  of  the 
Union  should  be  decided."  With  all  the  facts  before  us, 
we  now  realize  that  McClellan's  plan  was  correct.  But 
who  could  have  guessed  it  from  his  faulty  data  ?  For  the 
evil  genius  of  miscalculation,  which  had  pursued  him  from 
the  beginning,  still  bedeviled  his  counsels.  He  told  the 
General-in-Chief  that  the  force  opposed  to  him  outnum- 
bered the  Army  of  the  Potomac  .by  over  100,000  men. 
The  figures  were  out  of  all  reason.  This  imaginary  pre- 
ponderance of  gray-coats  might  perhaps  be  accounted  for, 


402       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

in  a  way,  by  the  vapors  rising  above  the  Chickahominy 
swamps.  The  squadrons  of  spectral  troopers,  that  from 
time  to  time  sweep  over  the  Scotch  moors,  are  no  less  real 
than  were  those  100,000  Confederates.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  advantage  lay  on  the  northern  side  by  some  12,800 
men.134  This  Halleck,  of  course,  did  not  know.  He  had  to 
decide,  by  the  light  of  the  figures  laid  before  him,  whether 
such  additional  troops  —  20,000  in  all  —  as  the  President 
had  authorized  him  to  promise,  would  constitute  a  suf- 
ficient reenforcement.  If  this  increase,  so  ran  Mr.  Lin- 
coln's instructions,  enabled  McClellan  to  operate  against 
Richmond  with  a  strong  probability  of  success,  the  Penin- 
sular campaign  was  to  be  renewed  ;  if  not,  the  army  was 
to  be  withdrawn,  and  united  with  General  John  Pope's 
recently  formed  command,  in  front  of  Washington.135 
Anxious  as  McClellan  was  to  go  forward,  he  would  not 
say  that  the  chances,  even  when  improved  by  those  20,000 
men,  were  in  his  favor.  He  declared  himself  "  willing  to 
try  it,"  but  dwelling  upon  the  imaginary  odds,  on  the  op- 
posing side,  he  pleaded  for  heavier  reinforcements.  These 
Halleck  could  not  give.  And  what  he  learned  from  the 
other  officers,  whom  he  consulted  at  Harrison's  Landing, 
hardly  improved  the  outlook  ;  for  they  were  about  evenly 
divided  in  their  opinions  as  to  whether  the  army  should 
advance  or  retreat.  Under  these  circumstances,  it  is  not 
to  be  wondered  at  that  the  General-in-Chief,  upon  his 
return  to  Washington,  added  his  voice  to  the  counsels 
of  the  powerful  group  —  soldiers,  cabinet  ministers,  and 
representatives,  who  were  urging  the  President  to  recall 
McClellan.  That  officer  now  lost  the  last  vestige  of  his 
influence  with  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  the  President  no  longer 
hesitated  to  give  the  fateful  order. 

McClellan's  instructions  to  return  from  the  Peninsula 
caused  him,  as  he  said,  "  the  greatest  pain  "  he  had  "  ever 
experienced."  The  bitterness  of  his  mortification  at  this 
inglorious  finish  to  the  campaign  was  heightened  not  a 
little  by  a  sincere  belief  that  the  contemplated  movement 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         403 

would  be  a  blunder.  He  protested  against  the  retreat 
iu  a  despatch  which  has  been  deservedly  praised.  Still, 
Halleck's  reply,  it  must  be  said,  seemed  equally  cogent ; 
and  what  was  more  to  the  purpose,  it  directed  his  subor- 
dinate to  obey  orders,  "  with  all  possible  promptness." 136 
Whether  McClellan  did  so  or  not  is  one  of  the  doubtful 
questions  which  have  grown  out  of  his  much  debated 
doings.  It  took  him  somewhat  over  three  weeks  to  re- 
move the  troops  with  their  material  from  the  James  to 
the  Potomac.  "  Gross  mismanagement,"  said  one  contem- 
porary critic  in  the  Army  of  the  Potomac.  "  No  human 
power  could  prevent  delays  in  such  a  delicate  operation," 
said  another.137  Wide  as  this  difference  of  opinion  was,  it 
still  divides  historians  of  the  Peninsular  campaign;  but 
happily  there  is  no  need  of  rehearsing  the  whole  stale 
controversy  here.  He  would  be  a  wise  man,  moreover, 
who  could,  with  the  information  now  available,  determine 
just  what  degree  of  blame  attaches  to  the  General  com- 
manding. That  he  appeared  culpably  slow,  at  the  time, 
to  Halleck  and  the  administration,  is  not  surprising.  In 
their  feverish  anxiety  to  reenforce  Pope,  against  whom 
the  enemy  was  massing,  they  doubtless  expected  too 
much  of  McClellan  ;  while  he,  eating  his  heart  out  with 
disappointment,  failed  to  respond  in  that  spirit  of  single- 
minded  obedience  to  which  they  were  clearly  entitled. 
Halleck  showered  him  with  telegraphic  appeals  to  hasten. 
He  invariably  answered,  in  effect,  that  the  movement  was 
progressing  with  all  reasonable  despatch,  but  he  contin- 
ued his  protests.  "  It  is  not  possible,"  declared  a  typical 
message,  "  for  any  one  to  place  this  army  where  you  wish 
it,  ready  to  move,  in  less  than  a  month.  If  Washington 
is  in  danger  now,  this  army  can  scarcely  arrive  in  time  to 
save  it.  It  is  in  much  better  position  to  do  so  from  here 
than  from  Acquia."  138  Once,  indeed,  he  came  dangerously 
near  to  expressing  these  protests  in  action.  Just  a  week 
after  the  order  to  withdraw,  a  letter  meant  for  the  eyes  of 
his  wife  told  a  singular  story. 


4o4       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

"  I  hope  to  be  ready  to-morrow  afternoon,"  it  ran,  "to 
move  forward  in  the  direction  of  Richmond.  I  will  try 
to  catch  or  thrash  Longstreet,  and  then,  if  the  chance 
offers,  follow  into  Richmond  while  they  are  lamming  away 
at  Pope.  It  is  in  some  respects  a  desperate  step,  but  it 
is  the  best  I  can  do  for  the  nation  just  now ;  and  I  would 
rather  even  be  defeated  than  retreat  without  an  effort  to 
relieve  Washington  in  the  only  way  at  all  possible.  .  .  . 
I  half  apprehend  that  they  will  be  too  quick  for  me  in 
Washington,  and  relieve  me  before  I  have  the  chance  of 
making  the  dash.  If  so,  well  and  good.  I  am  satisfied 
that  the  dolts  in  Washington  are  bent  on  my  destruction, 
if  it  is  possible  for  them  to  accomplish  it."  A  postscript 
to  this  letter  added  :  — 

"I  received  a  very  harsh  and  unjust  telegram  from 
Halleck  this  morning.  .  .  .  Under  the  circumstances  I 
feel  compelled  to  give  up  the  idea  of  my  intended  attack 
upon  Richmond,  and  must  retrace  my  steps."  139 

The  fate  of  eminent  commanders  who  have  disobeyed 
under  somewhat  similar  circumstances  may  have  come  to 
the  fore  in  McClellan's  well-stocked  recollections  of  mili- 
tary history ;  or  the  despatch,  which  had  so  nettled  him, 
may  have  brought  the  General  to  his  senses.  It  read  :  — 

"  The  enemy  is  crossing  the  Rapidan  in  large  force. 
They  are  fighting  General  Pope  to-day;  there  must  be 
no  further  delay  in  your  movements.  That  which  has 
already  occurred  was  entirely  unexpected  and  must  be 
satisfactorily  explained.  Let  not  a  moment's  time  be  lost, 
and  telegraph  me  daily  what  progress  you  have  made  in 
executing  the  order  to  transfer  your  troops."  14° 

Though  McClellan  complied,  he  answered  sharply 
enough.  For,  by  this  time,  Halleck,  and  Pope  as  well, 
had  been  relegated  to  his  black  book.  They  were  in 
accord  with  Lincoln  and  Stanton.  That  —  if  there  had 
been  no  other  reasons  —  was  enough  to  render  them  con- 
temptible, in  his  eyes.  He  took  no  pains,  moreover,  to 
hide  the  feeling ;  while  his  private  correspondence  evinces 


THE   YOUNG   NAPOLEON         405 

how  strained  relations  had  become  between  the  adminis- 
tration and  the  captain  of  its  principal  army.  If  MeClel- 
lan  moved,  as  he  claimed,  "with  the  utmost  rapidity 
possible,"  appearances  certainly  failed  to  do  him  justice. 
So  far,  indeed,  had  they  gone  against  him,  during  these 
weeks  of  suspense  and  recrimination,  that  when  at  last  he 
got  his  troops  back  to  the  Potomac,  he  was,  as  far  as  his 
superiors  were  concerned,  the  most  discredited  officer  in 
the  whole  command. 

McClellan's  removal  now  seemed  inevitable.  But  who 
should  succeed  him  ?  To  this  question  the  President  gave 
prayerful  consideration,  for  upon  its  answer  might  hinge 
the  fate  of  the  Union.  He  looked  about  him,  as  indeed  he 
had  been  looking  many  anxious  weeks,  to  find  some  sign 
of  the  coming  man.  His  quest  was  thus  far,  however, 
in  vain.  "  A  great  captain,"  said  one  of  the  old  drama- 
tists, "  is  the  chiefest  gift  of  Providence  to  a  nation."  He 
might  have  added,  "  and  the  rarest."  At  all  events,  the 
Lord  seemed  to  have  withheld  his  bounty  in  this  direction 
from  the  people  of  the  North.  Two  prominent  Generals, 
Ambrose  E.  Burnside,  McClellan's  intimate  friend,  and 
Ethan  Allen  Hitchcock,  a  talented  soldier  on  duty  at  the 
War  Department,  are  known  to  have  in  turn  declined  the 
command.  Both  of  them  shrank  from  a  post  which  they 
deemed,  not  without  reason,  beyond  their  powers ;  and 
the  field-marshal's  batons  still  lay  unrevealed  in  the  camp- 
chests  of  the  few  officers  who  really  were  equal  to  the 
task.  Until  one  of  these  great  captains  could  be  distin- 
guished from  among  a  host  of  epauleted  heroes,  Lincoln 
did  not  see  his  way  clear  to  McClellan's  retirement.  It 
was  when  the  matter  presented  this  aspect,  no  doubt,  that 
Halleck  promised  the  General  command  of  all  the  forces 
in  Virginia,  as  soon  as  they  should  become  united.141  At 
the  same  time,  McClellan's  opponents,  eager  to  get  rid  of 
him  at  any  price,  proclaimed  Pope  the  rising  sun  of  the 
army's  hope ;  and  urged  the  President  to  appoint  their 
latest  favorite  to  McClellan's  place.  This  Mr.  Lincoln 


4o6       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

would  gladly  have  done,  but  the  new-comer,  though  he 
had  given  a  good  account  of  himself  in  a  limited  western 
field,  had  still  to  prove  his  mettle  on  the  larger  theater 
of  Virginian  operations.  So  the  President  determined  to 
test  Pope  before  letting  go  of  McClellan ;  and  the  man- 
ner in  which  he  set  about  this  delicate  proceeding  was 
peculiarly  Lincolnian.  McClellan  should  not  be  removed 
from  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  but  the  Army  of  the  Po- 
tomac should  be  removed  from  him.  It  was  to  be  merged, 
part  by  part,  into  the  Army  of  Virginia,  so  that  Pope 
might  fight  the  impending  campaign  before  Washington, 
at  the  head  of  the  combined  forces.  If  the  new  man  won, 
the  problem  of  commanders  would  be  solved ;  if  he  lost, 
the  old  chief  would  still  be  available. 

This  explains  the  anomalous  situation  in  which  McClel- 
lan found  himself,  at  Alexandria,  during  the  closing  days 
of  August.  He  had  reminded  Halleck,  as  soon  as  he 
reached  the  Potomac,  of  that  promise  to  place  all  the 
troops  under  his  orders ;  but  Halleck  was  too  busy,  per- 
haps, to  answer.  Then  he  begged  the  President,  as  well 
as  the  General-in-Chief,  to  have  his  status  at  least  defined. 
"Tell  me  what  you  wish  me  to  do,"  pleaded  the  despatch 
to  Lincoln,  "  and  I  will  do  all  in  my  power  to  accomplish 
it.  I  wish  to  know  what  my  orders  and  authority  are.  I 
ask  for  nothing,  but  will  obey  whatever  orders  you  give." 142 
In  the  President's  brief  answer  this  important  question 
was  again  ignored.  It  received  no  more  attention,  in  fact, 
than  was  vouchsafed  to  a  request,  which  McClellan  had 
previously  made,  that  "a  handsome  order"  issue  from 
Washington,  thanking  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  for  its 
services  on  the  Peninsula.  Lincoln  was  obviously  in  no 
mood  for  tossing  bouquets  at  McClellan.  The  President's 
sole  concern  with  the  "Young  Napoleon,"  at  this  time, 
must  have  been  to  get  his  troops  away  from  him  in  season 
to  reenforce  Pope,  whose  second  Bull  Run  campaign  now 
rapidly  developed.  Corps  after  corps  was  detached  from 
McClellan,  amidst  a  cross-fire  of  impatient  telegrams, 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         407 

until,  as  he  pathetically  reported,  every  fighting  man  —  to 
the  very  guard  around  his  camp  —  had  gone.143  Then  at 
last  came  the  answer  to  those  repeated  requests  for  offi- 
cial light  on  the  eclipsed  commander's  position.  "Gen- 
eral McClellan,"  proclaimed  an  order  from  the  War 
Department,  "  commands  that  portion  of  the  Army  of 
the  Potomac  that  has  not  been  sent  forward  to  General 
Pope's  command." 144  This  piece  of  seeming  irony,  in 
which,  however,  we  discern  rather  the  sober  operation  of 
Mr.  Lincoln's  plan,  added  not  a  little  to  McClellan 's 
discomfiture.  A  spectacle  for  gods  and  men,  the  chief 
so  lately  of  a  hundred  thousand  veterans  sat  idle  in  his 
tent,  stripped  of  all  but  a  fleeting  shadow  of  his  splendid 
authority.  Declining  to  issue  a  countersign  for  this 
mockery  of  an  army,  he  bore  himself  with  what  dig- 
nity his  trying  situation  admitted  of,  until  the  cannon- 
ading in  a  far-away  battle  echoed  through  the  deserted 
camp.  Only  a  soldier  can  fathom  the  depths  to  which 
that  noise  stirred  McClellan.  He  telegraphed  to  Hal- 
leek  :  — 

"  I  cannot  express  to  you  the  pain  and  mortification  I 
have  experienced  to-day  in  listening  to  the  distant  sound 
of  the  firing  of  my  men.  As  I  can  be  of  no  further  use 
here,  I  respectfully  ask  that,  if  there  is  a  probability  of 
the  conflict  being  renewed  to-morrow,  I  may  be  permitted 
to  go  to  the  scene  of  battle  with  my  staff,  merely  to  be 
with  my  own  men,  if  nothing  more  ;  they  will  fight  none 
the  worse  for  my  being  with  them.  If  it  is  not  deemed 
best  to  entrust  me  with  the  command  even  of  my  own 
army,  I  simply  ask  to  be  permitted  to  share  their  f;ite  on 
the  field  of  battle.  Please  reply  to  this  to-night."  145 

On  the  following  day  the  General-in-Chief  responded : 

"  I  cannot  answer  without  seeing  the  President,  as 
General  Pope  is  in  command,  by  his  orders,  of  the 
department."  146 

McClellan's  humiliation  was  complete.  He  realized,  we 
venture  to  say,  as  nearly  as  any  nineteenth  century  leader 


408       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

could  realize,  how  King  Saul  felt  on  awaking  to  find  the 
skirt  of  his  robe  cut  off. 

What  especially  chagrined  McClellan  was  the  destina- 
tion of  his  troops.  It  must,  indeed,  have  seemed  hard  that 
the  army,  which  his  skilful  and  loving  care  had  brought 
to  a  high  degree  of  effectiveness,  should  be  marched  away 
from  him  to  swell  the  forces  of  an  obnoxious  rival.  For 
in  this  light  he  regarded  Pope.  That  officer  had  assumed 
command  with  a  flourish  of  trumpets  and  a  rattle  of  innu- 
endoes, at  which  the  whole  Army  of  the  Potomac,  from 
Major-Gene ral  McClellan  down  to  Private  John  Doe, 
took  grave  offence.147  If,  therefore,  any  lack  of  enthu- 
siasm marked  their  manner  of  supporting  him,  it  is  not 
surprising.  Articles  of  War  may  impose  obedience  upon 
a  soldier,  to  the  last  ditch ;  but  the  clause  which  shall 
compel  his  affection  for  a  commander  has  still  to  be  de- 
vised. That  is,  of  course,  the  commander's  lookout ;  and 
Pope,  vigorous,  gallant  captain  though  he  was,  had  tact- 
lessly cut  himself  off  from  reaching  the  hearts  of  these 
men.  They  had  no  confidence  in  him  from  the  begin- 
ning. Their  opinion  was  probably  summed  up  by  Mc- 
Clellan when  he  wrote  in  one  of  his  private  letters :  — 

"  I  see  that  the  Pope  bubble  is  likely  to  be  suddenly 
collapsed.  Stonewall  Jackson  is  after  him,  and  the  young 
man  who  wanted  to  teach  me  the  art  of  war  will,  in  less 
than  a  week,  either  be  in  full  retreat  or  badly  whipped."  148 

Believing  that  "Mr.  Pope,"  as  he  sometimes  called 
him,  would  inevitably  be  repulsed,  McClellan,  with  a  view 
to  protecting  the  Capital,  had  not  forwarded  his  troops 
from  Alexandria  as  promptly  as  Halleck's  urgent  de- 
spatches required.  Part  of  the  delay,  to  be  sure,  was 
due  to  inadequate  means  of  transportation,  and  ill-will 
towards  Pope  in  not  an  entirely  negligible  quantity; 
but  the  idea  of  a  reserve  for  the  defence  of  Washington 
appears  to  have  finally  determined  McClellan's  course. 
After  a  lively  interchange  of  messages,  he  had  appealed 
from  the  General-in-Chief  to  the  President.  This  was 


409 

rank  insubordination.  Franklin's  corps  was  kept  marking 
time,  halfway  on  the  road,  and  Pope  was  actually  fight- 
ing the  Second  Battle  of  Bull  Run,  when  McClellan  tele- 
graphed to  Lincoln :  — 

"  I  am  clear  that  one  of  two  courses  should  be  adopted : 
first,  to  concentrate  all  our  available  forces  to  open 
communication  with  Pope ;  second,  to  leave  Pope  to  get 
out  of  his  scrape,  and  at  once  use  all  our  means  to  make 
the  Capital  perfectly  safe.  No  middle  course  will  now 
answer."  149 

The  President  immediately  confirmed  Halleck's  order,150 
and  McClellan  obeyed  ;  but  obedience  came  too  late.  By 
the  time  Franklin  reached  the  scene  of  action,  Pope, 
severely  defeated,  was  in  retreat. 

McClellan's  phrase,  "leave  Pope  to  get  out  of  his 
scrape,"  was  unfortunate.  It  appeared  to  confirm  the 
charges  of  treachery  in  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  that 
were  now  showered  upon  the  President.  According  to 
these  charges,  McClellan's  apathy  in  withdrawing  from 
the  Peninsula  had  been  duplicated  at  Alexandria  ;  he  had 
diverted  most  of  his  troops  from  Pope,  while  those  who 
did  reach  that  officer  gave  him  half-hearted  service ;  the 
rank  and  file  were  demoralized  by  factious  sympathy  for 
"  Little  Mac  "  ;  his  favorite  lieutenants  had  dishonorably 
failed  the  new  commander,  on  the  battle-field,  and  so  forth, 
through  the  whole  catalogue  of  disloyalty.  As  many  of 
the  stories  came  to  Lincoln  from  Stanton,  Halleck,  or 
Pope,  they  lost  nothing  in  the  telling.  It  is  not  strange, 
therefore,  that  at  last  he  too  thought  ill  —  if  not  indeed 
the  worst  —  of  McClellan's  conduct.  "  He  has  acted  badly 
towards  Pope,"  said  the  President  sadly,  on  the  last  day 
of  Second  Bull  Run  ;  "  he  really  wanted  him  to  fail."  '51 
So  impressed,  in  fact,  was  Mr.  Lincoln  with  these  reports 
of  disaffection,  that  when  McClellan,  at  Halleck's  call, 
presented  himself  in  Washington,  shortly  after  the  battle, 
nothing  would  content  the  President  but  a  despatch  from 
the  General  to  his  friends  in  the  Army  of  the  Potomac, 


4io       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

asking  them  to  give  Pope  their  cordial  support.  Precisely 
to  what  extent  McClellan,  McClellan's  officers,  or  Mc- 
Clellan's  troops  were  remiss  will  probably  never  be  known. 
Out  of  their  relation  to  this  disastrous  campaign  grew  the 
most  stubbornly  contested  military  quarrel  left  over  from 
the  war.  Forty  years  of  controversy  have  not  brought  the 
discussion  down  to  the  final  word,  but  they  have  sufficed 
to  work  a  reversal  of  our  harshest  judgments.  Time, 
passing  soothing  fingers  over  partisan  animosities,  leaves 
us  clear-eyed  to  see  that  McCleUan,  Porter,  Griffin,  and 
the  rest  were  guiltless  —  whatever  may  have  been  their 
shortcomings  —  of  the  most  serious  charges  laid  at  their 
door.  Nevertheless,  during  the  closing  days  of  August,  in 
the  battle  summer  of  1862,  every  circumstance  seemed  to 
condemn  them  ;  and  not  a  few  of  the  leading  men  in 
Washington  shared  Pope's  opinion  that  "  the  greatest 
criminal "  of  all  was  McClellan. 

How  far  some  members  of  the  cabinet  carried  their  in- 
dignation was  detailed  in  a  previous  chapter.  We  have 
seen  how  they  sought  to  bring  about  McClellan's  dismissal 
in  disgrace  from  the  army  ;  how  fierce  became  the  demand, 
in  certain  other  quarters,  for  his  punishment,  and  how 
signally  all  these  efforts  failed.  Those  who  wanted  to 
crush  him  had  still  to  reckon  with  Lincoln.  That  the 
President  would  stand  in  their  way  seemed  inexplicable. 
Why  should  he  interpose  to  save  a  general  who  had  flouted 
him,  whose  unsoldierly  conduct  had,  to  all  appearances, 
sacrificed  a  campaign,  whose  failures  had  embarrassed 
the  administration,  and  whose  successes,  if  he  achieved 
any,  might  menace  its  very  existence,  at  the  polls?  To 
cashier  McClellan,  then,  out  of  hand,  would  doubtless 
have  placed  him  under  a  cloud  from  which  he  could  hardly 
have  emerged  in  time  to  trouble  Lincoln's  political  peace 
of  mind.  But  the  President,  shrewd  tactician  though  he 
was,  did  not  fight  that  wav.  In  the  crisis  produced  by  the 
disaster  at  Manassas,  his  thoughts  were  neither  of  revenge, 
of  discipline,  nor  yet  of  personal  ambition.  Towering 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         411 

gaunt  and  hollow-eyed  above  the  little-big  men  who  clam- 
ored around  him,  he  saw  through  the  fog  of  their  intrigues 
and  recriminations  the  one  thing  needful  to  be  done  at 
once.  As  soon  as  the  retreating  army  reached  the  defences 
of  Washington,  it  would  have  to  be  faced  about  to  protect 
the  Capital  against  the  victorious  Confederates.  Who, 
Lincoln  asked  himself,  was  to  rally  the  dispirited  and,  in 
fact,  disorganized  troops,  —  Halleck  ?  The  General-in- 
Chief  had  recently  shirked  lesser  responsibilities ;  and 
when  the  news  of  Pope's  overthrow  reached  headquarters, 
he  had,  in  a  condition  bordering  on  collapse,  summoned 
McClellan  to  his  aid.152  No,  Halleck  was  clearly  not  the 
man.  Pope?  —  The  trumpet  upon  which  he  had  sounded 
the  advance  so  stridently,  as  he  rode  to  the  war,  must  have 
been  lost  in  the  melee ;  for  he  was  returning  without  it. 
The  despondent  tone  of  certain  official  despatches,  as  he 
approached  Washington,153  to  say  nothing  of  his  increased 
unpopularity  with  the  army,  put  him  as  plainly  out  of  the 
question.  From  that  army,  itself,  the  President  received 
his  answer.  Most  of  the  officers  and  men  who  had  been 
on  the  Peninsula  called  for  their  old  commander.  They 
trusted,  indeed  loved  him  with  a  devotion  such  as  has 
been  lavished  upon  few  generals.  Caesar,  Turenne,  Conde, 
Napier,  Napoleon  —  all  swayed  the  affections  of  their 
armies  amidst  inspiring  victories ;  McClellan  had  won 
the  hearts  of  his  soldiers  without  great  triumph*,  and, 
remarkable  to  relate,  he  held  their  confidence  in  spite  of 
severe  reverses.  When  to  this  is  added  that  he  had,  thus 
far,  shown  himself  to  be  the  most  capable  organizer  and 
best  defensive  officer  on  the  Union  side,  we  see  the  wis- 
dom of  what  followed.  Mr.  Lincoln,  brushing  aside  his 
advisers,  without  even  telling  them  his  purpose,  deter- 
mined upon  McClellan's  reinstatement. 

Early  on  the  morning  of  September  2,  the  President, 
accompanied  by  Halleck,  went  to  McClellan's  house,  and 
asked  him  to  take  command  of  all  the  returning  troops, 
for  the  defence  of  Washington.154  The  General  promptly 


LINCOLN,  MASTER  OF   MEN 

assented.  His  courteous  behavior  during  the  interview 
made  it  none  the  less  trying  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  who,  we  re- 
member, had  but  a  few  days  before  subjected  McClellan 
to  a  "  sort  of  snubbing,"  as  the  President  phrased  it,  with 
a  view  to  his  dismissal  as  soon  as  a  new  general  could  be 
found  to  take  his  place.  It  was  somewhat  humiliating, 
therefore,  to  call  upon  him  now  for  help.  At  the  same 
time,  Lincoln,  with  unique  foresight,  had  kept  McClellan 
in  a  position  from  which  he  might  be  recalled  to  the 
command  as  easily  as  he  had  been  deprived  of  it ;  while 
the  President's  bearing  toward  him,  through  all  these 
vexations,  had  rarely  been  otherwise  than  cordial,  So  the 
General  met  his  visitors  fully  halfway,  and  immediately 
on  their  departure,  entered  upon  his  new  duties,  with  all 
the  enthusiasm  of  which  he  was  capable. 

The  restoration  of  McClellan  was,  as  far  as  Lincoln's 
civil  supporters  were  concerned,  the  most  unpopular  act 
of  his  administration.  It  aroused  a  storm  of  disapproval 
that  would  have  shaken  a  less  masterful  man,  but  the 
President  stood  firm.  The  fiercest  opposition,  as  we  have 
seen,  was  in  his  own  political  family  ;  and  the  turbulent 
cabinet  meeting  which  followed  the  appointment  has 
been  fully  described  elsewhere.  What  Lincoln  said  to  his 
excited  ministers,  therefore,  need  not  be  repeated  here. 
He,  himself,  summarized  it  later,  in  these  two  pithy  sen- 
tences :  — 

"  There  is  no  one  in  the  army  who  can  man  these  forti- 
fications and  lick  these  troops  of  ours  into  shape  half  as 
well  as  he  can."  "  We  must  use  the  tools  we  have ;  if  he 
cannot  fight,  himself,  he  excels  in  making  others  ready 
to  fight."  « 

Such  reasoning  was  unassailable,  and  McClellan's  harsh- 
est ministerial  critics  bowed  to  the  President's  will.  When 
that  meeting  adjourned,  Mr.  Lincoln  had  not  only  averted 
a  cabinet  crisis,  but  he  had,  at  the  same  time,  strength- 
ened his  executive  authority  over  all  its  members.  How 
different  this  was  from  his  military  relations,  the  Presi 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         413 

dent  realized  keenly.  Discussing  his  surrender  of  Sep- 
tember 2,  after  the  event,  he  confided  to  a  friend  that  the 
restoration  of  McClellan  was  the  most  painful  duty  of  his 
official  life.  "  There  has  been,"  he  said  to  another,  "  a 
design,  a  purpose  in  breaking  down  Pope,  without  regard 
to  the  consequences  to  the  country,  that  is  atrocious.  It 
is  shocking  to  see  and  know  this,  but  there  is  no  remedy 
at  present.  McClellan  has  the  army  with  him."  Pointing 
out,  moreover,  in  these  private  talks,  how  the  General's 
incessant  faultfinding  had  impaired  the  confidence  of  the 
troops  in  the  administration,  and  how  culpably  that  officer 
had  contributed,  generally  speaking,  to  the  demoraliza- 
tion which  he  was  now  counted  upon  to  correct,  Lincoln 
conceded  that  his  course  in  recalling  McClellan  was  a 
good  deal  like  "curing  the  bite  with  the  hair  of  the  dog." 
Yet  during  this  brief  period  of  panic,  not  to  say  insub- 
ordination, the  civil  power,  as  the  President  explained, 
seemed  under  military  subjection ;  and  Commander-in- 
Chief  though  he  was,  he  could  find  no  way  out  but  that  of 
placing  the  factious  commander  again  in  the  saddle.158 

The  rapidity  with  which  McClellan  restored  the  morale 
of  his  now  delighted  troops  amply  justified  Lincoln's 
course.  It  was  not  the  President's  purpose,  however,  to 
entrust  him  with  another  campaign ;  and  the  command 
in  the  field  was  again  offered  to  Burnside.  That  pheno- 
menally modest  officer  declined  the  offer  as  before.  De- 
claring himself  incompetent  to  lead  so  large  a  force,  he 
warmly  repeated  his  opinion  that  McClellan  "  could  com- 
mand the  Army  of  the  Potomac  better  than  any  other 
general  in  it."  The  question  was  still  unsettled  when  news 
came  that  Lee  purposed  crossing  the  Upper  Potomac  into 
Maryland.  To  oppose  him,  Lincoln  ordered  an  immediate 
advance  and,  under  the  pressure  of  events,  committed  the 
movement  —  what  alternative  had  he?  —  to  McClellan. 
"  Again  I  have  been  called  upon  to  save  the  country," 
wrote  the  General,  in  his  grandiose  style.  "  The  case  is 
desperate,  but  with  God's  help  I  will  try  unselfishly  to 


4i4      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

do  my  best,  and,  if  He  wills  it,  accomplish  the  salvation 
of  the  nation."  157  As  McClellan  departed  for  the  front, 
however,  he  disclosed  a  change  of  heart  in  one  respect, 
at  least.  "  The  feeling  of  the  government  towards  me," 
reads  a  farewell  telegram  to  his  wife,  "  I  am  sure,  is  kind 
and  trusting.  I  hope,  with  God's  blessing,  to  justify  the 
great  confidence  they  now  repose  in  me,  and  will  bury  the 
past  in  oblivion."  158  His  brief  sojourn  on  the  mourners' 
bench  had  evidently  been  not  without  its  chastening  effect ; 
but  this  submissive  mood,  as  we  shall  see,  wore  off  all  too 
quickly. 

No  sooner  was  McClellan  well  into  the  Maryland  cam- 
paign than  his  old  quarrel  with  the  administration  broke 
out  afresh.  He  won  the  battles  of  South  Mountain  and 
A  ntietam,  to  his  great  credit  be  it  said,  with  the  men  who, 
less  than  three  weeks  before,  had  fled  in  defeat  from  the 
very  army  which  now  gave  way  before  them ;  but  his  ex- 
cessive caution  held  him  back  from  vigorously  following 
up  an  advantage  that,  in  the  grasp  of  a  more  intrepid 
general,  might  have  led  to  the  total  overthrow  of  the  Con- 
federate host.  When  he  telegraphed,  therefore,  to  Wash- 
ington that  Lee  had  been  driven  back  over  the  Potomac 
into  Virginia,  the  President's  joy  was  flecked  with  disap- 
pointment. For  Mr.  Lincoln,  in  the  hope  of  a  decisive 
campaign  at  last,  had  recently  urged  McClellan  not  to  let 
the  enemy  "  get  off  without  being  hurt  "  ; 159  and  his  con- 
gratulatory despatch  after  South  Mountain  had  closed 
with  the  entreaty,  "  Destroy  the  rebel  army  if  possible." ieo 
That  it  was  possible,  even  the  General's  military  eulogists 
for  the  most  part  concede.  In  fact,  the  Confederates  were 
several  days  later  so  badly  shattered  at  Antietam,  that  it 
needed  but  a  single  well-directed  blow,  within  the  follow- 
ing twenty-four  hours,  to  crush  them.161  Yet  McClellan 
turned  what  should  have  been  an  overwhelming  victory 
into  almost  a  drawn  battle.  Commanding  three  men  to 
Lee's  two,  he  fatally  overrated,  as  of  old,  his  opponent's 
strength,  and  allowed  the  adroit  Southerner  to  escape,  over 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         415 

"a  very  deep  and  difficult  ford," 16S  without  further  damage. 
Important  as  was  McClellan's  service  to  the  Union  in 
heading  off  this  invasion  of  the  Northern  States,  his  failure 
to  reap  the  full  fruits  of  victory  aroused  indignant  criti- 
cism throughout  the  country.  On  every  hand,  men  count- 
ing the  cost  declared  Antietam  to  have  been  the  bloodiest 
day  of  the  war ;  and  aghast  at  its  slaughter,  they  severely 
blamed  the  Federal  commander  because  what  he  did  fell 
so  far  short  of  what  he  might  have  done. 

Those  who  desired  McClellan's  removal  now  besieged 
the  President  with  all  their  old-time  vigor.  Lincoln  gave 
them  scant  encouragement ;  yet  how  closely  he  kept  his 
accounts  with  the  General  checked  up  may  be  gathered 
from  a  few  remarks  made  by  him  to  one  of  the  political 
friends  who  urged  that  officer's  dismissal. 

"  I  am  now,"  said  he,  "  stronger  with  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac  than  McClellan.  The  supremacy  of  the  civil 
power  has  been  restored,  and  the  Executive  is  again  mas- 
ter of  the  situation.  The  troops  know  that  if  I  made  a 
mistake  in  substituting  Pope  for  McClellan,  I  was  capable 
of  rectifying  it  by  again  trusting  him.  They  know,  too, 
that  neither  Stanton  nor  I  withheld  anything  from  him 
at  Antietam,  and  that  it  was  not  the  administration,  but 
their  own  former  idol,  who  surrendered  the  just  results 
of  their  terrible  sacrifices  and  closed  the  great  fight  as  a 
drawn  battle,  when  had  he  thrown  Porter's  corps  of  fresh 
men  and  other  available  troops  upon  Lee's  army,  he 
would  inevitably  have  driven  it  in  disorder  to  the  river 
and  captured  most  of  it  before  sunset."  183 

McClellan,  it  goes  without  saying,  gave  abundant  rea- 
sons for  not  seizing  this  golden  opportunity.  His  troops, 
we  are  told,  were  "overcome  by  fatigue,"  provisions, 
forage,  and  ammunition  had  to  be  distributed,  certain 
divisions  were  "  somewhat  demoralized,"  reinforcements 
were  expected,  there  was  no  "  absolute  assurance  of  suc- 
cess," and  so  on.  Yet  all  this  fails  to  explain  why  his 
victorious  force,  in  much  better  condition  than  the  pitia- 


4i 6      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF  MEN 

bly  ragged,  half -starved  army  which  it  had  just  defeated, 
could  not  pursue  where  Lee's  war-worn  soldiers  fled.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  fortune  favored  the  Union  arms,  at  this 
juncture,  in  every  respect  but  one  —  that  of  generalship. 
McClellan  insisted  upon  the  necessity  of  reorganizing  and 
resting  the  army  before  advancing.  His  demands,  more- 
over, for  fresh  troops,  equipments,  supplies,  and  what  not, 
were  painfully  reminiscent  of  the  delays  that  had  brought 
his  previous  campaign  to  naught.  The  impatience  of  the 
government  began  to  show  itself  again  in  the  despatches 
from  headquarters,  to  which  McClellan  responded  with 
something  of  his  former  asperity.  Consoling  himself, 
meanwhile,  in  familiar  letters,  as  of  old,  he  wrote  home  : 

"  I  am  tired  of  fighting  against  such  disadvantages, 
and  feel  that  it  is  now  time  for  the  country  to  come  to  my 
help  and  remove  these  difficulties  from  my  path.  If  my 
country  men  will  not  open  their  eyes  and  assist  themselves, 
they  must  pardon  me  if  I  decline  longer  to  pursue  the 
thankless  avocation  of  serving  them.  ...  I  feel  that  I 
have  done  all  that  can  be  asked  in  twice  saving  the 
country.  If  I  continue  in  its  service,  I  have  at  least  the 
right  to  demand  a  guarantee  that  I  shall  not  be  inter- 
fered with.  I  know  I  cannot  have  that  assurance  so  long 
as  Stan  ton  continues  in  the  position  of  Secretary  of  War 
and  Halleck  as  General-in-Chief."  164 

Yet  the  writer's  persistent  inaction  after  Antietain 
rendered  interference  of  some  sort  from  Washington  im- 
perative. So,  at  all  events,  thought  the  President,  as  he 
presented  himself  in  McClellan's  camp  on  October  1,  a 
fortnight  from  the  day  of  the  battle,  to  find  out  for  him- 
self where  the  trouble  lay. 

During  this  visit,  which  lasted  three  days,  the  General 
found  ample  opportunity  to  defend  his  course.  He  flat- 
tered himself  that  Lincoln  —  affable  as  ever  —  became 
"  fully  satisfied  "  with  what  had  been  done.  The  Presi- 
dent "more  than  once  assured  me,"  says  McClellan,  "  that 
he  was  fully  satisfied  with  my  whole  course  from  the  be- 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         417 

ginning ;  that  the  only  fault  he  could  possibly  find  was 
that  I  was  perhaps  too  prone  to  be  sure  that  everything 
was  ready  before  acting,  but  that  my  actions  were  all 
right  when  I  started."  165  But  an  anecdote  related  by  one 
of  the  presidential  party  throws  rather  a  different  light 
upon  the  situation.  Early  on  the  morning  of  their  second 
day  in  camp,  Lincoln  took  a  stroll  with  his  friend,  the 
Hon.  O.  M.  Hatch  of  Illinois.  As  they  stood  upon  the 
summit  of  a  near-by  hill,  and  looked  down  over  the  city 
of  white  tents,  among  which  the  men  were  beginning  their 
daily  duties,  the  President,  waving  his  hand  toward  the 
scene,  said  in  a  low,  earnest  voice  :  — 

"  Hatch,  Hatch,  what  is  all  this  ?  " 

"  Why,  Mr.  Lincoln,"  answered  his  companion,  "  this 
is  the  Army  of  the  Potomac." 

The  President  hesitated  a  moment,  and  then  said  in  a 
louder  tone  :  — 

"No,  Hatch,  no.  This  is  General  McClellan's  body- 
guard." m 

How  far  Mr.  Lincoln  was  from  being  satisfied  may  be 
still  further  inferred  from  one  of  his  first  military  orders 
after  returning  to  Washington.  "  The  President  directs," 
telegraphed  Halleck  on  October  6,  "that  you  cross  the 
Potomac  and  give  battle  to  the  enemy,  or  drive  him  south. 
Your  army  must  move  now,  while  the  roads  are  good." 167 
On  the  following  day,  to  emphasize  the  urgency  of  imme- 
diate action,  the  General-in-Chief  wrote :  — 

*'  The  country  is  becoming  very  impatient  at  the  want 
of  activity  of  your  army,  and  we  must  push  it  on.  I  am 
satisfied  that  the  enemy  are  falling  back  toward  Rich- 
mond. We  must  follow  them  and  seek  to  punish  them. 
There  is  a  decided  want  of  legs  in  our  troops.  They 
have  too  much  immobility,  and  we  must  try  to  remedy 
the  defect."  m  Still  McClellan  did  not  move.  It  was 
partly  to  find  out  why,  that  the  Confederate  General, 
"Jeb"  Stuart,  crossed  the  Potomac,  with  a  division  of 
cavalry,  a  few  days  later.  His  reconnoissance  developing 


4i 8       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

into  a  raid  across  Maryland  and  Pennsylvania,  he  rode 
entirely  around  McClellan's  army,  and,  despite  Union 
attempts  to  head  him  off,  recrossed  the  river  unharmed. 
Stuart  had  subjected  Napoleon's  namesake  to  this  humil- 
iation once  before,  on  the  Peninsula  ;  but  the  second  raid 
was  especially  galling,  as  it  took  place  on  northern  terri- 
tory. Lincoln  must  have  been  smarting  under  the  ridicule 
evoked  by  the  affair,  when,  shortly  afterward,  one  of  a 
group  who  were  chatting  familiarly  with  him  asked:  — 

"  Mr.  President,  what  about  McClellan  ?  " 

Without  looking  at  his  questioner,  Mr.  Lincoln  drew 
an  imaginary  circle  and  said  deliberately :  — 

"  When  I  was  a  boy  we  used  to  play  a  game,  three  times 
round  and  out.  Stuart  has  been  round  him  twice  ;  if  he 
goes  round  him  once  more,  gentlemen,  McClellan  will  be 
out."  169 

The  General  himself,  ascribing  Stuart's  success  to  a 
lack  (/  horses  for  the  Federal  cavalry,  telegraphed  that 
unless  this  deficiency  was  supplied,  there  would  be  con- 
stant danger  of  similar  expeditions.  To  which  Halleck 
curtly  replied :  — 

"  The  President  has  read  your  telegram,  and  directs  me 
to  suggest  that  if  the  enemy  had  more  occupation  south 
of  the  river,  his  cavalry  would  not  be  so  likely  to  make 
raids  north  of  it."  17° 

Mr.  Lincoln's  peremptory  order  to  advance  was  a  week 
old.  Every  day  had  seemed  to  furnish  McClellan  with 
fresh  reasons  for  not  obeying  it.  The  fine  autumn  season 
was  slipping  by,  and  the  Potomac  still  separated  him  from 
his  rapidly  recruiting  enemy.  Another  effort  to  drive  the 
General  forward  now  came  by  special  messenger,  in  one 
of  the  President's  characteristic  letters.  It  read  :  — 

"  You  remember  my  speaking  to  you  of  what  I  called 
your  over-cautiousness.  Are  you  not  over-cautious  when 
you  assume  that  you  cannot  do  what  the  enemy  is  con- 
stantly doing  ?  Should  you  not  claim  to  be  at  least  his 
equal  in  prowess,  and  act  upon  the  claim  ?  As  I  under- 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         419 

stand,  you  telegraphed  General  Halleck  that  you  cannot 
subsist  your  army  at  Winchester  unless  the  railroad  from 
Harper's  Ferry  to  that  point  be  put  in  working  order. 
But  the  enemy  does  now  subsist  his  army  at  Winchester, 
at  a  distance  nearly  twice  as  great  from  railroad  trans- 
portation as  you  would  have  to  do  without  the  railroad 
last  named.  .  .  .  Again,  one  of  the  standard  maxims  of 
war,  as  you  know,  is  to  '  operate  upon  the  enemy's  com- 
munications as  much  as  possible  without  exposing  your 
own.'  You  seem  to  act  as  if  this  applies  against  you,  but 
cannot  apply  in  your  favor.  Change  positions  with  the 
enemy,  and  think  you  not  he  would  break  your  communi- 
cation with  Richmond  within  the  next  twenty-four  hours  ? 
You  dread  his  going  into  Pennsylvania  ;  but  if  he  does  so 
in  full  force,  he  gives  up  his  communications  to  you  abso- 
lutely, and  you  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  follow  and  ruin 
him.  If  he  does  so  with  less  than  full  force,  fall  upon  and 
beat  what  is  left  behind  all  the  easier.  Exclusive  o(f  the 
water-line,  you  are  now  nearer  Richmond  than  the  enemy 
is  by  the  route  that  you  can  and  he  must  take.  Why  can 
you  not  reach  there  before  him,  unless  you  admit  that  he 
is  more  than  your  equal  on  a  march  ?  His  route  is  the  arc 
of  a  circle,  while  yours  is  the  chord.  The  roads  are  as 
good  on  yours  as  on  his.  ...  If  he  should  move  north- 
ward, I  would  follow  him  closely,  holding  his  communi- 
cations. If  he  should  prevent  our  seizing  his  communica- 
tions and  move  toward  Richmond,  I  would  press  closely 
to  him,  fight  him  if  a  favorable  opportunity  should  pre- 
sent, and  at  least  try  to  beat  him  to  Richmond  on  the 
inside  track.  I  say  *  try ' ;  if  we  never  try,  we  shall  never 
succeed.  If  he  makes  a  stand  at  Winchester,  moving 
neither  north  nor  south,  I  would  fight  him  there,  on  the 
idea  that  if  we  cannot  beat  him  when  he  bears  the  wastage 
of  coming  to  us,  we  never  can  when  we  bear  the  wastage 
of  going  to  him.  This  proposition  is  a  simple  truth,  and 
is  too  important  to  be  lost  sight  of  for  a  moment.  In 
coming  to  us  he  tenders  us  an  advantage  which  we  should 


420      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

not  waive.  We  should  not  so  operate  as  to  merely  drive 
him  away.  As  we  must  beat  him  somewhere  or  fail  finally, 
we  can  do  it,  if  at  all,  easier  near  to  us  than  far  away.  If 
we  cannot  beat  the  enemy  where  he  now  is,  we  never  can, 
he  again  being  within  the  intrenchments  of  Richmond. 
.  .  .  When  at  length  running  for  Richmond  ahead  of 
him  enables  him  to  move  this  way,  if  he  does  so,  turn  and 
attack  him  in  rear.  But  I  think  he  should  be  engaged 
long  before  such  point  is  reached.  It  is  all  easy  if  our 
troops  march  as  well  as  the  enemy,  and  it  is  unmanly  to  say 
they  cannot  do  it.  This  letter  is  in  no  sense  an  order."  1T1 

McClellan  answered  briefly  that  he  would  advance  as 
soon  as  his  troops  were  in  suitable  condition.  Some  such 
result  —  we  have  reason  to  know  —  was  expected  by  Mr. 
Lincoln.  Before  the  letter  left  his  hands,  he  confided  a 
fear  to  Vice-President  Hamliu  that  it  would  do  no  good, 
and  that  he  would  soon  be  compelled  to  retire  McClellan. 

And  now  came  another  soul-trying  period  of  recrimi- 
nation. The  General  commanding  the  army  refused  to 
move  because  the  horses  and  supplies,  which  he  inces- 
santly demanded,  did  not  arrive  in  sufficient  quantities. 
The  General-in-Chief  replied  that  they  were  forwarded 
with  all  possible  speed,  that  no  armies  in  the  world  had 
been  better  cared  for  on  a  campaign,  and  that  no  such 
lack  of  things  existed,  at  any  time,  as  would  justify  Mc- 
Clellan in  not  obeying  the  President's  order  to  advance. 
Lincoln  himself,  as  the  controversy  grew  warmer,  was 
betrayed  by  the  "  cheerless,  almost  hopeless  prospect " 
of  accomplishing  anything,  into  several  caustic  little 
messages.172  They  stung  McClellan  into  everything  but 
action.  "  If  you  could  know,"  he  wrote  to  his  wife,  "  the 
mean  character  of  the  despatches  I  receive,  you  would  boil 
over  with  anger.  When  it  is  possible  to  misunderstand, 
and  when  it  is  not  possible ;  whenever  there  is  a  chance 
of  a  wretched  innuendo,  then  it  comes."  173  A  less  self- 
centered  man  would  have  read  his  danger  in  all  this. 
McClellan  had  eyes  only  for  that  "  ideal  completeness  of 


THE   YOUNG  NAPOLEON         421 

preparation,"  which  he  now  again,  as  on  previous  occa- 
sions, strove  to  attain  at  the  expense  of  more  important 
military  considerations.  He  still  refused  to  see  that  Lee's 
army  was  incomparably  worse  off  than  his.  It  would,  in 
all  likelihood,  have  made  no  difference  to  him  had  he 
seen  it;  for  McClellan  was  by  temperament  incapable 
of  grasping  the  full  significance  of  Napoleon's  maxim, 
"The  commander  who  allows  himself  to  be  guided  by 
the  commissaries  will  never  stir,  and  all  his  expeditions 
will  fail."  That  this  expedition,  at  all  events,  would  fail, 
seemed  inevitable.  The  situation  suggested  to  Lincoln 
one  of  his  little  stories,  which  he  told  to  a  friend  of  the 
General,  who  called  at  the  White  House. 

"  McClellan's  tardiness,"  said  he,  "  reminds  me  of  a  fel- 
low in  Illinois  who  had  studied  law,  but  had  never  tried 
a  case.  He  was  sued,  and,  not  having  confidence  in  his 
ability  to  manage  his  own  case,  employed  a  lawyer  to 
manage  it  for  him.  He  had  only  a  confused  idea  of  the 
meaning  of  law  terms,  but  was  anxious  to  make  a  display 
of  learning,  and,  on  the  trial,  constantly  made  sugges- 
tions to  his  lawyer,  who  paid  but  little  attention  to  him. 
At  last,  fearing  that  his  lawyer  was  not  handling  the 
opposing  counsel  very  well,  he  lost  all  his  patience,  and 
springing  to  his  feet  cried  out :  *  Why  don't  you  go  at 
him  with  a  fi.  fa.,  a  demurrer,  a  cajrias,  a  surrebutter, 
or  a  ne  exeat,  or  something ;  and  not  stand  there  like  a 
nudum  pactum,  or  a  non  est  ?  '  "  174 

Whether  the  parable  reached  McClellan,  as  the  Presi- 
dent doubtless  intended,  deponent  saith  not ;  but  it  is  of 
record  that  "  Little  Mac's  "  inertia  gave  way,  at  last,  under 
Lincoln's  persistent  goad.  Suddenly,  on  the  2Gth  of  Octo- 
ber, with  many  supplies  still  undistributed,  reinforcements 
not  yet  up,  and  preparations  as  planned  generally  incom- 
plete, the  army  was  put  in  motion.  A  week  later,  on  No- 
vember 2,  McClellan  announced  to  the  President  that  his 
entire  force  had  crossed  the  river,  and  would  forthwith 
advance  upon  the  enemy. 


422       LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

But  it  was  too  late.  Lee,  with  heavily  recruited  ranks, 
again  faced  him.  Most  of  the  Union  advantages,  so  dearly 
bought  at  Antietam,  were  gone.  One  still  remained,  how- 
ever, —  the  inside  track  to  Richmond ;  and  Mr.  Lincoln, 
while  trying  to  get  McClellan  started,  during  the  closing 
days  of  October,  had  worried  lest  his  dilatory  tactics 
should  sacrifice  that  too.  The  President  had  then,  in  his 
own  mind,  fixed  a  test  whereby  the  General  was  to  rise 
or  fall.  If  McClellan  should  cross  the  Potomac  in  time 
to  deal  the  Confederates  a  telling  blow,  all  would  be 
well ;  but  if  he  allowed  them  to  pass  over  the  Blue  Ridge, 
so  as  to  get  between  Richmond  and  the  Army  of  the  Poto- 
mac, it  would  cost  him  his  command.175  Accordingly,  when 
it  was  reported  in  Washington  that  Lee  had  reached  Cul- 
peper  Court  House,  orders  were  issued  for  McClellan's 
removal176  Late  on  the  night  of  November  7,  during  a 
driving  snowstorm  that  appropriately  linked  the  close  of 
his  military  career  with  the  close  of  the  beautiful  autumn 
weather  which  he  had  frittered  away,  the  General  was 
deposed.  An  officer  from  the  War  Department,  arriving 
in  camp  with  the  still  protesting  Buruside,  delivered  this 
message :  — 

"  By  direction  of  the  President  of  the  United  States, 
it  is  ordered  that  Major-General  McClellan  be  relieved 
from  the  command  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  and 
that  Major-General  Burnside  take  the  command  of  that 
army."  177 

A  supplementary  message  from  Halleck  read  :  — 

"  Repair  to  Trenton,  N.  J.,  reporting  on  your  arrival 
at  that  place,  by  telegraph,  for  further  orders."  178 

With  a  subordination  which  surprised  those  who  had 
feared  a  coup  d'etat,  McClellan  promptly  turned  the  com- 
mand over  to  his  successor,  and  took  an  affectionate  leave 
of  the  army. 

The  rest  is  soon  told.  In  McClellan's  dismissal  the 
Democratic  politicians  found  their  opportunity.  His 
antagonism  to  Lincoln's  policy,  his  personal  grievances 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         423 

against  the  government,  his  measure  of  fame  as  a  mili- 
tary hero,  his  popularity  in  the  army,  and  his  attractive 
personality  —  all  combined  to  make  him  the  available 
candidate  of  the  party.  He  was  nominated  at  the  Demo- 
cratic National  Convention,  in  the  summer  of  1864,  to 
contest  the  presidency  with  Mr.  Lincoln,  whom  the  Re- 
publicans had  again  named  for  that  office.  The  vital  issue 
between  them  was  squarely  made.  Lincoln  stood  for  the 
preservation  of  the  Union,  by  a  vigorous  prosecution  of 
the  war  and  the  extinction  of  slavery.  McClellan  declared 
for  a  policy  of  conciliation  and  compromise,  whereby  peace 
might  be  restored  to  the  Union,  without  any  impairment 
of  State  rights.  A  spirited  canvass  followed.  Its  rancor 
still  lingers  in  the  memory,  if  not  in  the  blood,  of  those 
who  took  part.  At  the  outset,  indications  pointed,  from 
many  directions,  to  McClellan's  success.  Even  the  demand 
in  the  Democratic  platform  —  which  he  disavowed  as  going 
too  far  —  for  an  immediate  cessation  of  hostilities,  on  the 
ground  that  the  war  was  a  failure,  seemed  to  meet  with 
the  momentary  approval  of  the  people.  They  were  weary 
of  a  struggle  which  had  plunged  almost  every  household 
into  mourning ;  and  the  horror  of  Grant's  terrible  but 
apparently  futile  losses,  during  the  recent  campaign  from 
the  Rapidan  to  the  James,  was  still  uppermost  in  their 
thoughts.  A  heavy  weight  of  condemnation  —  popular 
discontent  readily  finds  a  scapegoat  —  rested  on  the 
administration.  So  wide-spread,  indeed,  did  this  feeling 
become,  that  toward  the  end  of  the  summer  Lincoln's 
prospects  for  reelection  were  gloomy  in  the  extreme. 
Some  of  his  own  party  leaders  intriguing  against  him 
had,  as  we  have  seen,  placed  General  John  C.  Fremont 
in  nomination;  while  those  who  remained  loyal  to  him 
entered  upon  the  canvass  with  grave  misgivings.  The. 
President,  himself,  sensed  the  omens  of  defeat. 

But  a  seasoned  campaigner  like  Lincoln  could  not,  to 
use  his  own  expression,  be  easily  "  stampeded."  All  the 
political  sagacity,  and  tact  in  the  management  of  men, 


424      LINCOLN,  MASTER   OF   MEN 

that  characterized  his  previous  contests  were  brought  to 
bear,  with  signal  potency,  upon  this,  the  crowning  con- 
flict of  his  career.  As  President  he  maintained,  it  should 
be  said,  a  dignified  attitude  toward  the  canvass ;  yet  op- 
portunities for  making  himself  felt,  at  the  critical  junc- 
tures, were  not  lacking.  Fremont's  withdrawal  was  soon 
secured,  influential  Republican  malcontents  were  brought 
one  after  the  other  into  line,  local  partisan  differences  in 
divers  places  yielded  to  compromise,  and  steadily  closing 
ranks  gave  promise  at  last  of  a  solid  party  vote.  With 
the  opportune  victories,  meanwhile,  of  Farragut  in  Mobile 
Bay,  Sherman  at  Atlanta,  and  Sheridan  in  the  Shenan- 
doah  valley,  the  tide  of  popular  favor  set  strong  in  Lin- 
coln's direction.  His  ability  to  make  a  successful  end  of 
the  war  was  no  longer  doubted  by  the  people.  They  be- 
came convinced,  moreover,  that  Lincoln's  election  would 
lead  to  peace,  union,  and  the  abolition  of  slavery ;  but 
that  McClellan's  election  would  as  surely  involve  a  sur- 
render of  some,  if  not  all,  the  principles  for  which  they 
had  poured  out  their  blood  and  their  treasure.  Nations 
do  not  deal  in  syllogisms,  but  give  them  time,  and  they 
will  arrive  in  their  own  way  at  essentially  sound  conclu- 
sions. When  the  North  registered  its  decision  at  the  polls, 
on  November  8,  Lincoln  was  elected  by  an  overwhelm- 
ing vote.  A  popular  majority  of  almost  half  a  million, 
and  States  enough  to  cast  212  electoral  votes,  out  of  a 
possible  233,  gave  him  one  of  the  notable  triumphs  in  our 
history.179  McClellan  received  the  21  electoral  votes  of 
New  Jersey,  Delaware,  and  Kentucky,  two  of  which,  it 
should  be  said,  were  originally  Slave  States.  With  this 
meagre  consolation  stake  the  Democratic  candidate,  his 
military  commission  resigned,  passed  into  the  limbo, 
already  well  tenanted,  of  ungratified  presidential  ambi- 
tions. 

Amidst  the  rejoicing  over  Lincoln's  success,  Secretary 
Seward,  addressing  a  public  meeting,  said :  — 

"  The  election  has  placed  our  President  beyond  the  pale 


THE  YOUNG  NAPOLEON         425 

of  human  envy  or  human  harm,  as  he  is  above  the  pale  of 
human  ambition.  Henceforth  all  men  will  come  to  see 
him  as  we  have  seen  him  —  a  true,  loyal,  patient,  patriotic, 
and  benevolent  man.  Having  no  longer  any  motive  to 
malign  or  injure  him,  detraction  will  cease,  and  Abraham 
Lincoln  will  take  his  place  with  Washington,  and  Frank- 
lin, and  Jefferson,  and  Adams,  and  Jackson  —  among 
the  benefactors  of  the  country  and  of  the  human  race."  18° 
This  noble  utterance  offered  a  felicitous  close  to  an 
unusually  fierce  campaign,  but  it  erred,  alas,  in  one  partic- 
ular. Lincoln  was  not  beyond  the  pale  of  human  harm. 
In  less  than  six  months  from  the  day  of  that  triumph,  the 
man  before  whom  leaders,  great  and  small,  had  gone  down 
in  unbroken  succession,  went  down  himself  before  the 
only  thing  that  ever  wholly  mastered  him  —  an  assassin's 
bullet. 


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